


so I can breathe you in

by purple_cube



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-30
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-01-21 09:08:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 28,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1545332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purple_cube/pseuds/purple_cube
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>I know this would have happened anyway</i> – Katniss Everdeen (Chapter 27, Mockingjay). </p><p>Mrs. Everdeen returns to District 12 with Katniss, while Peeta searches Panem to find a home – and himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Canon AU that diverts at the end of Mockingjay - I posted a snippet of one of the later chapters on Tumblr under the title "A Conventional Courtship", which perhaps is a better description of the direction that this story is heading in. Rated E for the final chapter.

 

My mother opens the door to my room – my _prison_ – in the Training Center. She tries to give me a smile, but it doesn’t quite reach her vacant eyes. “The trial is over. We’re going home, Katniss.”

Over the next few days, she helps to bathe and feed me until I am strong enough to leave, though I still have to be carried to the rooftop. Aboard the hovercraft, I tune out from the conversation that Haymitch and Plutarch are having until we reach District Three.

Plutarch comes back into my focus when he laughs loudly and says that I must have a million questions, and then proceeds to answer whatever he assumes I had wanted to ask. As he tells me about President Paylor, my trial and Dr. Aurelius, I watch my mother. She is gone, hollow, like she had been when my father died.

But then we land in Three, and I see her raise her hand in a half-hearted wave to Plutarch. Perhaps she is not entirely gone, after all.

“Why Twelve?” I ask when we’re back in the air.

“Paylor still wants to be seen to be punishing you,” Haymitch tells me. “Even if you _are_ mentally disoriented. And Twelve probably seemed like the best option to get you out of people’s minds as quickly as possible.”

“But…” I can’t bring myself to say the words out loud, but I know from the look on my mother’s face that she is thinking it too. _But Prim will be everywhere in Twelve_. Prim, who will want to feed her goat, or pet her ragged cat in the kitchen, or crave the last slice of bread but be unwilling to ask for it.

Only she won’t do any of those things – because Prim is gone.

And not just her. Death is everywhere in Twelve – I saw it with my own eyes only mere months ago.

“You don’t have to come,” I blurt out, addressing them both. “This is my punishment, not yours.”

“Don’t be silly,” Haymitch answers gruffly. “We wouldn’t leave you there alone.”

My mother doesn’t say anything. I am all she has left now, and she is all I have left. I wonder if this will be enough to repair the relationship that was damaged so many years ago, or if we will go through the motions until one of us finds the strength to leave the other.

When we arrive, she leads me not to our former home, but to the building that is furthest from the main gate. “I asked if we could move into another house,” she tells me as we shuffle through Victors’ Village, my weak state slowing us down. “Haymitch offered to bring over our belongings.”

Neither of us looks up when we pass the home that we once shared with Prim.

*

Haymitch does bring across our things, making a couple of trips before disappearing into his own home. I hadn’t missed the sight of him trawling through the hovercraft in search of liquor, and I doubt that I will see him much at all now that he has fulfilled the promise he made to my mother.

We have other neighbors now. Greasy Sae and her granddaughter have moved into the house next door, and she and my mother take turns to cook meals for the four of us. Judging from the noise, I assume that all of the houses in the Village are occupied, but I don’t bother to ask. I sleep in my new room, wearing the clothes that I left the Capitol in. My mother doesn’t say anything, just brings food up to the room for me to eat. Sometimes, she tells me that the meal was cooked by Sae, or that the older woman has been to visit. At other times, she says nothing at all.

One day, maybe a few weeks after we arrive, I hear a hiss from the floor below. Slowly, I make my way down the stairs – and find a thin and haggard Buttercup poised on the bottom step. He must have come in through the small kitchen window that my mother has a habit of leaving open. I wonder if he has been to every house in Village after seeing that we were not in our former home.

“She’s not here,” I call out.

He hisses loudly.

“You won’t find Prim.”

He perks up at the sound of her name, but speaking it out loud has the opposite effect on me, and I crumple to the ground. He bounds up the steps and circles me as I cry myself into unconsciousness.

When my mother returns, her eyes fill with tears at the sight of the cat. Together, we clean his cuts in the upstairs bathroom and dig out a thorn from his paw. He sleeps at the foot of my bed that night, watching over me.

The following morning, she shakes me awake and thrusts the telephone into my hand.

“It’s Dr. Aurelius. _Please_ talk to him.”

I place the receiver to my ear and greet him. My voice sounds hoarse and strange even to my own ears.

He talks, and I listen without interrupting. He tells me to write down a routine for the rest of the day, so I do, once I manage to find a pen and some paper. _Shower. Get dressed. Eat lunch. Unpack one of the bags that Haymitch brought over. Eat dinner. Go to bed._

I complete the first two steps slowly but successfully, and make my way down the stairs at the same time that my mother walks through the front door. Her vacant expression is quickly filled with surprise, but she doesn’t say anything as we both make our way to the kitchen.

We eat lunch in silence too. As she clears the dishes, she tells me that she is going out again.

“Where do you go every day?”

“President Paylor has promised to build a new factory for medicines,” she explains. “I was put in charge of compiling an inventory of useful plants that could be used for mass manufacture. I go to Dax Trevell’s house, the one nearest to the gates, to discuss which plants can used for healing and which may be amenable to mass production.”

I have never spoken to Dax Trevell, but I know that he inherited the business that my maternal grandparents had run in town. “Like a large-scale apothecary?”

“Yes. We will make medicines that only the Capitol had access to before, like morphling, but also new herbal therapies that have long been used in the districts. But first, the houses need to be rebuilt. People need somewhere to live if they are to come here for work. So, for now, there are only a handful of us who are preparing the groundwork for the factory and which medicines will be made. The rest of the district is currently working on building and clearing the…debris.”

I don’t need to ask what she means by that word. The human remains that I saw when I was last here are just another snapshot of horror to greet me whenever I close my eyes. They add to the myriad of reasons that I tell myself to keep indoors.

“It keeps me busy,” she adds after a while.

So, this is how she has been coping. I have to admit that I’m a little jealous of her finding a way to bury her grief – because I certainly haven’t. I let her go without another word, and when the front door slams, I spend the afternoon familiarizing myself with our new home. I find the plant book, the one that contains Peeta’s paintings. Not for the first time, I wonder where he is and what he is doing.

In the evening, I come downstairs for dinner when I hear Greasy Sae and her granddaughter arrive. After, my mother and I go through the book together and discuss which plants could be dried and powdered, and which could be made into elixirs.

*

I lose many days, a thought that only registers in my mind when I look outside the kitchen window one morning to see that daffodil shoots have started to appear in the garden. I call Dr. Aurelius sporadically at first, and then every other day. Slowly, I develop a routine that sticks. I go to the woods every day, sometimes to hunt, other times just for a walk. I learn that Victors’ Village is filled with former residents of Twelve, even our old home. Peeta’s, too.

One day in the middle of spring, I enter the house through the back door, as I always do when I have a full game bag. Clicking it shut, I pause when the sound of my mother’s voice drifts through the hallway.

“I don’t know, Hazelle. I don’t want do anything to jeopardize her recovery. Give me a few days to talk to her, and I’ll let you know.”

I’ve heard enough, and slam my bag down on the table. I catch my mother saying a hasty goodbye before her quick footsteps bring her into view.

“I didn’t hear you come in.”

“What did Hazelle want?” I ask bluntly. While our relationship is certainly improving, we are both wary of each other’s moods, and I can see her drop the innocent look immediately.

“Gale’s been asking about you. He was thinking of calling, but Hazelle told him that she would ask ahead first.”

I don’t know what to say, so instead I start to unpack the game and dig out a chopping board and set of knives. My mother watches me for a long time, before setting herself down in a chair at the far end of the table. She begins to prepare vegetables that she must have laid out just before Hazelle’s phone call.

Midway through cleaning the last of the squirrels, I finally give her my answer. “Tell Hazelle to give you Gale’s number. I’ll call him when I’m ready.”

The next day, I return home to find a piece of paper on the table that contains three phone numbers – one each for Gale, Johanna and Annie.

I call Annie first, and though we were never close, the conversation flows easily – on her side, at least. After ten minutes, she tells me that she is pregnant.

“Congratulations,” I say, not hiding my surprise. She is understandably nervous, but I can also detect excitement and wonder in her voice.

She tells me that she wishes Finnick were here. I tell her that I wish for that too.

As I’m about to end the call, she asks if I have spoken to Peeta. I admit that I haven’t, and she tells that he spent some time in District Four with her.

“He left just last week.”

“Oh.” I pause for a moment, letting her news sink in. “How is he?”

“He’s well. I didn’t really know him before, except for what Finnick had told me. And I have to admit that I wasn’t sure what to think when Johanna said that she was bringing him along –“

“He came with Johanna?”

“Yes. And he left with her to return to District Seven.”

I peer down at the piece of paper that holds Johanna’s number, suddenly glad that I had decided to call Annie first.

“You know, I tried not to watch any of the Games after my own,” she continues. “Even just the interviews would trigger so many horrible memories. So I didn’t really get to know Peeta at all. And then, when we were in Thirteen, he was…”

“Hijacked,” I whisper.

“Yes. But when he was here, he was pleasant and kind and so easy to talk to.”

 _Yes, the Peeta that was reaped certainly was_ , I think to myself. “It sounds like he’s getting better.”

“Johanna thinks so. She says he’s almost like his old self. But he gets…flashbacks. Memories of what the Capitol did to him that he can’t block out. They both get them, actually.”

“And how is Johanna?”

Annie doesn’t speak for a moment, and I begin to regret my question. I had planned on calling her anyway, so maybe I shouldn’t have asked.

But then, Annie begins, and I realize that she was merely gathering her thoughts. “I didn’t see much of Johanna before. I wasn’t part of the Capitol circuit, and Finnick did his best to make sure that they left me alone. But I knew who she was, and Finnick talked about her a lot. He admired her. But he was also scared for her, because he knew that a lot of what she showed to people was just an act.”

I think back to the last time I saw her in District Thirteen. A frail young woman lying in a hospital bed, broken by the military test that had prayed on her biggest fear. Yes, much of the Johanna Mason that is seen by the world is the armor that she wears.

“I wouldn’t call her _kind_ exactly, but she was polite and considerate, and after a few days we could talk to each other pretty easily. One night, we stayed up late and talked as much as we could about Finnick, filling in the blanks for each other. I told her about his life in District Four, and she told me some of their stories from Capitol. When I told her that I was pregnant, she hugged me.”

I must make a surprised noise of some sort, because she laughs. “I know, it’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

“You should call her,” she says when I don’t reply. “Talk to Peeta, too. It…it could be good for you.”

When she asks if I want Johanna’s number, I tell her that I already have it, and make a promise that I will call them.

But, I wait another day before picking up the phone again.

She answers on the third ring with a curt recital of her name.

“It’s Katniss.”

“Mockingjay,” she says in an almost musical drawl, though not cruelly, and I’m sure that I can hear a smile in her voice. “And how are you?”

We talk for some time, recapping the last four months of our lives for each other’s benefit. She tells me that she moved back to Seven when she was released by Thirteen’s doctors after the war ended, only returning to the Capitol briefly at Coin’s request on the night that I shot my arrow into her.

“You did the right thing,” Johanna tells me. “I didn’t think so at the time, but I get it now.”

A few weeks after returning to Seven, Peeta called her and asked if he could stay. “I couldn’t say no, not after everything we went through in the Capitol. He said that he didn’t really have anywhere else to go. Delly was staying in Thirteen, but he only had bad memories of his time there, and remaining in the Capitol was never going to be an option for any of us. And he couldn’t face going back to Twelve after…well, after everything.”

After his family had been killed. After almost everything in sight was turned to ashes and dust. I can understand that – given the choice, I certainly wouldn’t be back here.

“We went to District Four last week. A vacation, of sorts.”

I tell her that I know, that I had spoken with Annie. She is midway through narrating a conversation she had with Finnick just before his wedding when I hear the sound of a door closing, and realize that it’s from Johanna’s end.

“It’s Peeta,” she says quietly. “You wanna talk to him?”

“Sure,” I say as coolly as I can.

There’s a rustling sound, which I assume is the switching of the telephone from one hand into another. The next thing I hear is Peeta’s voice.

“Hey, Katniss. How are you?”

“Good,” I say, although I’m certain that he will know it’s a lie. “I’m well. How are you?”

“I’m good, too.” I have to smile, because I know that he is lying as well. But he doesn’t sound melancholic or weary, and he certainly doesn’t sound like he doesn’t want to talk to me, so perhaps he really has made progress.

“So, you’re staying with Johanna?” I ask, careful to keep my voice neutral.

“Yeah,” he replies with a breathy, nervous laugh. “When Dr. Aurelius released me, I didn’t really know where to go. Turns out that I’m not as popular as I was in school.”

I smile at his words, remembering the blond boy who was invariably surrounded by a large group of friends whenever I saw him.

“Delly wants to stay in Thirteen for a while and help with the transition that they’re making to above-ground facilities. And, well, I didn’t have such a great time when I was there…” He laughs at himself again, and I find myself joining in, though I have no idea why. I was the main reason that he hated being in Thirteen, wasn’t I? I was the mutt that he was terrified of, and then the one person who should have been helping him to recover but couldn’t.

“Then there’s Beetee, but I found out that he’s pretty heavily involved in the new government, and well, let’s just say that I’d rather not be. I’ve had enough of political games to last a lifetime.”

“You and me, both,” I say wryly.

“Well, if anyone can understand that, you can. And then there was Twelve, with you and Haymitch. I wanted to come back…but the thought of…”

His voice trails away, and I rush to fill the silence, for his sake more than my own. “I know. It’s hard, being here. But I didn’t have a choice. To be honest, I stayed indoors at the beginning, and by the time I finally went out, the others had made a lot of progress in clearing the…debris.”

“What’s it like now?” he asks quietly.

“Empty,” I tell him. “Flat. You can see for miles from the Village gates.” But the human remains and the piles of ashes are gone now, I think to myself. That was always the hardest part.

“What did they do with…with the bodies?”

I don’t speak a moment, surprised by his question. And that’s when it hits me. He wants to know where his family is now, where to go – if he ever returns – to grieve for them.

“The meadow,” I manage to choke out. “They were all buried where the meadow used to be.”

We both succumb to the silence then. When he starts up a new conversation, his voice is filled with a false brightness that I recognize from our time in front of the cameras.

“Did you know that Effie came to see me while I was in the Capitol?”

I decide to play along. “I didn’t. How is she?”

“Strange,” he says, accompanied by another awkward laugh. “Not like she used to be, but almost like she’s trying to figure out how she should behave now. Kind of like we were when we first went to the Capitol. As if someone’s in her head telling her not to forget about posture and manners and timekeeping. Only, maybe the voice in this case is telling her not to forget to be humble and remorseful and constantly apologetic.”

“It wasn’t her fault,” I mumble.

“No, it wasn’t. They weren’t all bad, were they? They were just as much products of the system as we were in the districts. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t vote for Coin’s new version of the Games.”

I knew that we would have to talk about this eventually, but am at a loss for words now that he has brought it up.

“It’s okay,” he says after a while. “Haymitch explained it to me. In fact, he told me as soon as you left the room that night. That’s how I knew that I had to get to you. To stop you from taking the nightlock pill.”

I hear him in my mind, telling me that he _can’t_ when I am screaming at him to let me go. I should say thank you, I guess, for saving my life. But I still don’t know whether I am grateful that he did.

So, instead I ask him how his hand is. The one that I bit into until I drew a steady stream of blood.

He laughs, this time easily and with none of the discomfort from before. “Just another battle scar. Something to remember you by, right?”

For a moment, he sounds so much like the boy with the bread, the one that fell in love with me, that I close my eyes and imagine him standing in front of me.

“Do you still have nightmares?” he asks suddenly, breaking the spell. “I’m sorry,” he says a moment later. “That’s none of my business.”

“Yes,” I whisper. I clear my throat and repeat myself so that he can hear. “Yes. I still have them.”

“Me too.”

“About being in the Capitol?”

“Mostly. But sometimes, they’re about you.”

About me being a mutt, I imagine. And even if I don’t say it out loud, he must know what I am thinking.

“Sometimes, they’re from the hijacking,” he goes on to explain. “But more recently, they’ve been like the ones I used to get. Where something happened to you and I couldn’t reach you. Where I keep losing you. Like in the Quarter Quell.”

Oh. “Have you talked to Dr. Aurelius about them?”

“Yeah.”

He doesn’t elaborate, so I don’t ask anything else. I am thinking of how best to end the conversation when he says my name.

“Katniss?”

“Yeah?”

“It was good to talk to you.”

“You too,” I say truthfully. “I’ll speak to you again soon.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

 

I call Johanna – and Peeta – again the following week, after Dr. Aurelius encourages me to add regular conversation to my routine. A few days later, I pick up the phone again, this time dialing the only number on that piece of paper that I have yet to use.

The voice at the other end couldn’t be clearer if he was standing beside me. “Hello?”

“Hi, Gale.”

He breathes out my name, his astonishment evident. I ask him how he is, and he replies politely before asking the same of me. Only the sounds of our breathing can be heard for some minutes – until I tell him that I’m sorry.

“What for?”

_For shutting you out. For blaming you_. “For not being able to separate you from Prim in my head.”

He doesn’t say anything, so I tell him something that I hope will be true eventually. “I think that I might be able to…one day.”

“I hope that you will,” he says sincerely.

I run my hand across the surface of the desk where I am sat, gathering dust along the tips of my fingers. I have to concentrate my focus on the grey flecks in an effort to keep the images of flames and blond hair and blue eyes at bay. “Tell me about your new job,” I suggest after a few minutes.

He does, and though I know that it is something I would never want for myself, I am happy that he has the opportunity that he has always wanted, to make a real difference to Panem. When he begins to tell me about his family, I realize that his brothers and Posy will have prospects available to them in District Two that they could never have dreamed of here in Twelve.

I start to wonder what kind of opportunities Prim would have taken advantage of in this new world, and Gale’s voice quickly gathers distance – until he calls my name loudly.

“What?”

“I asked if you’ve been looking after my woods.”

*

By the end of spring, there are nearly a hundred residents in Twelve, living amongst the mishmash of luxury Victors’ Village homes, makeshift shelters and crumbling original houses that are scarcely habitable. By the time I venture out to anywhere other the woods, rebuilding projects have begun in earnest across the district. I choose to approach Thom rather than a foreman, who receives my offer to help with a grateful smile.

Three weeks into my new bricklaying job, I begin to speak to my colleagues. Our conversations are inconsequential, and they are careful to steer clear of talk of the war or any kind of politics. It isn’t until we are into the middle of May, when I overhear a discussion about fishing techniques in the open sea, that it occurs to me that some of these people are not originally from Twelve.

“You should be careful with the new settlers,” my mother says after seeing me walk home with one of them. “The ones that aren’t from here…they still see you as the victor, or the Mockingjay. You’re just a celebrity to them.”

I don’t reply, but I know that she is right.

“We’ve been lucky so far,” she continues. “They kept you out of the limelight following the trial. But eventually, someone is going to comment on how you’re not as mentally disoriented as the trial made you out to be. And somebody else is going to decide that the rest of Panem needs to know about it.”

“ _Who_ kept me out of the 'limelight’?”

“Gale, mostly.”

I look up in surprise.

“He works with Plutarch, the Secretary of Communications.”

I nod, because I know this, but still don’t see how it is relevant to our lives here in Twelve.

“Plutarch pushed for tight laws against media intrusion into soldiers’ lives after the war, including the former victors. As part of the deal, Gale and Johanna agreed to be interviewed in a series of programs about the rebels’ experiences in District Thirteen, while some of Snow’s former loyalists were interviewed to give the Capitol’s side.”

“Why would Gale do that?”

“To protect the rest of us,” she says simply. “To stop the endless questioning of you and Peeta and Beetee, and all of the other rebels.”

The next day, I go back to keeping to myself as I work.

When I call Johanna in the afternoon, she tells me that Peeta has returned to Thirteen after all. “Delly kept begging him to go, and we found out that there was a hovercraft shipment heading there at the start of the week that was willing to take him. I knew he would cave in the end.”

I’m disappointed that I won’t hear his voice, and I don’t have Delly’s number. Nor do I want to ask Johanna if she has it. “Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“Nope,” she replies, and I can almost picture her indifferent shrug. “He might not come back at all. Don’t think Seven really suited him.”

She doesn’t elaborate, so instead I ask how Seven is suiting her, and am pleased to discover that she is making a name for herself on the Restoration Committee. “Seems like my victor status is actually working in my favor, for once.”

*

On a warm morning in mid-July, I step out of the house to see a figure hovering at the bottom of the steps.

Peeta looks up at me with a soft smile, both hands tucked into the pockets of his pants.

“You’re back.”

“I am.”

I search for something else to say, and in the end settle for the only words that tumble around in my head. “You look really well.”

The haunted expression is gone from his eyes, and though he seems thinner than he had done following the intensive military training in Thirteen, he looks healthy. His hair is a little shorter, sweeping haphazardly across his forehead to hide some of the burns that he had received on _that_ night in the Capitol.

“So do you,” he replies after a moment.

I realize that I’m still rooted to my spot at the top of the porch, and concentrate on making my way down the steps towards him. I don’t know whether I should hug him, or if he even wants me to. Instead, I settle for placing my hand on his forearm and squeezing lightly. His mouth twitches in surprise before both of our gazes drop to the ground.

“It’s good to see you.”

“You too,” he replies, looking up. “I’m staying with Haymitch,” he adds sheepishly, before laughing at what must be a perturbed look on my face. “Don’t worry, I spent most of yesterday sanitizing the place, and I threatened to pour the liquor away if he didn’t at least make an effort to keep things relatively tidy. So far, he’s keeping his word, and I’m pretty sure he’s only had half a bottle today. He actually seems happy to have some company. Well, as happy as Haymitch can allow himself to look, anyway.”

My mind is stuck on his earlier words. “You were here yesterday?”

“Yeah. But I wasn’t really in the right frame of mind to talk to anyone, so I headed straight to Haymitch’s place.”

“And will you be here long?” I ask hesitantly.

He shrugs his shoulders, fists still deep in his pockets. “I don’t know yet.”

Two of my crewmates walk past, and I return their waves. Peeta turns to watch them, and when he faces me again, I begin to make my excuses. “I have to get to work now. I’m on one of the construction teams for the morning shifts. I usually go hunting in the afternoons.”

He nods approvingly. “Keeping busy. That’s good.”

“You should come over for dinner,” I suggest hurriedly, before I can change my mind. “My mother would like to see you again. Bring Haymitch.”

His lips curl as he nods in acceptance. “That would be nice. How about tomorrow evening?”

I nod back. “See you then.”

“See you, Katniss.”

I tell my mother when I return home after hunting late in the afternoon. She smiles as if recalling a fond memory and tells me that she is looking forward to dinner.

But, when the knock on the door comes the following day, we’re both a little nervous. It occurs to me that I haven’t seen my mother talk to anyone except for Sae during those early weeks when they shared meals. She has been keeping her own company just as much as I have outside of our work commitments.

She answers the door, and leads Haymitch and Peeta to the kitchen where I am hovering by the table.

Haymitch greets me a curious look. “Sweetheart. You’re looking better.”

“Been keeping busy,” I say with a shrug. “You should try it.”

“Who says I haven’t?”

He has a glint in his eye when he looks at Peeta, who turns to me with an exasperated shake of his head. “Sae came by yesterday and asked Haymitch to look after some geese for her. She said that there were a few down by the meadow that she managed to coax back and trap in her garden. But she was worried about having them around her granddaughter, so she wants Haymitch to look after them instead, just as long as she can have access to as many eggs as she likes.”

“And I said yes,” Haymitch adds smugly.

“You know nothing about raising geese,” I point out as my mother busies herself with setting the table. Peeta rushes to help her, and I catch the grateful smile that she delivers in return.

“I knew nothing about mentoring winning tributes either, but the two of you are still here.”

I recoil, I can’t help it. Barely a minute has passed, and he’s already brought up the Games.

Peeta calls his name in a warning tone, and Haymitch holds up his hands in protest. “Fine,” he huffs. “I’ll behave.”

He pulls out the chair that is closest to him and sits, straightening his legs out in front. “I have a small pen for now, just with four geese. But they should lay a lot of eggs, and could start breeding next season. No meat before that,” he says, pointing his finger at me. “So keep your arrows to yourself ‘til next spring.”

My mother interrupts to tell us all to take a seat, and brings across the stew from the stove. We eat mostly in silence, aside from the occasional question from Peeta or my mother.

When she gets up to retrieve a set of small plates and more forks, I notice for the first time that Peeta has brought a small box with him.

“It’s just a plain sponge cake,” he explains. “Didn’t want to turn up empty-handed.”

It’s a nice gesture, one that I can’t help but smile at, and I catch him grinning in return. I stand abruptly when I spot Haymitch watching our exchange with interest. “I’ll make some tea to go with it.”

When we all settle back down with dessert, I am surprised that my mother is the one to bring up the subject of the Games. “Peeta, I remember you saying that your father told you we knew each other.”

He nods, his eyes searching for me before darting away quickly.

“How much did he tell you?”

“Just what I said on camera. That he wanted to marry you, but you chose Katniss’s father after hearing him sing.”

I watch my mother carefully. I can’t remember the last time she volunteered any information about my father to anyone other than Prim. But when she speaks, I realize that it is Peeta’s father who is on her mind, not mine. “We had the same circle of friends at school, and obviously the apothecary and the bakery were both on the Square, so we lived close by. Our parents encouraged us to spend time together – it was seen as a favorable match – and we liked each other enough to oblige.”

“But you didn’t love him,” Peeta says quietly.

“No,” she admits. “And it wasn’t until I met Katniss’s father that I realized how deep Bannock’s feelings for me had been. I didn’t intend to hurt him, but I’m afraid that I did.”

“Sounds familiar.” Both Peeta and I turn to glare at Haymitch, but he merely shrugs and takes another sip of tea.

When we look back to my mother, Peeta gives her a reassuring smile. “He understood. He never hated you for it. Anyone who saw the four of you around town understood.”

He turns his attention to me. “I remember feeling jealous when I used to watch you from the bakery window. I would wonder what it would be like to be part of such a loving family.”

“It didn’t last all that long,” I comment quietly, unable to meet my mother’s eyes.

“That wasn’t anyone’s fault,” is Peeta’s gentle reply, though I don’t know whether it is for my benefit or my mother’s. Perhaps it is a little of both.

We descend into silence again, and I suspect that all of our minds are trapped somewhere in the past.

“How have you been spending the last few months, Peeta?” my mother asks finally. “Katniss mentioned that you had been in District Seven for a while.”

He nods. “Seven, and then Thirteen with Delly. I didn’t know where to go once I was allowed to leave the Capitol, so it seemed like a good idea to try somewhere new for a while.”

“And how does it feel being back here?”

“Different to before,” he acknowledges after swallowing a mouthful of cake. “So different. But, even after a couple of days, it feels more comfortable than any of the other places.”

“You must miss your family,” my mother says, and almost immediately looks like she regrets it.

“I do,” Peeta says quietly. “A lot. I didn’t see much of them during that last year, after I moved up here, but sometimes I still think of heading down to the bakery to see them, or wonder what my brothers would be doing in the evening. It’s the little things that you miss the most, isn’t it?”

It is. It’s those moments where you forget that they’re gone, like when you first wake up in the morning and wonder whether your sister will already have eaten breakfast. I look around the table and realize that we are all on such familiar terms with grief. We each retreat into our own thoughts again, and for a long time, no one says a word.

Eventually, my mother gets to her feet and begins to clear away the dishes. Peeta and I help, pretending not to see Haymitch slip away quietly.

When Peeta says his goodbyes to my mother, and then to me, I pull him into a tight hug. He doesn’t hesitate to return it.

*

Dinner becomes a weekly event for the four of us, and then for six once Sae and her granddaughter are invited. Maisie quickly attaches herself to Peeta, and together we spend large parts of the evening teaching her to read and draw. There is talk of a school opening after the following summer, but until then, Maisie will spend her days alternating between the families that reside in Victors’ Village while Sae cooks for the construction teams.

Peeta donates his afternoons to one of the crews that is rebuilding around the Main Square. His mornings are reserved for baking, and within a week I catch sight of a handful of people waiting patiently outside Haymitch’s front door. As I head out of Victors’ Village, I glance over my shoulder to see Peeta emerge with a tray of bread in his arms. A few days later, when Sae adds a fresh loaf of bread to my crew’s meal rations, I immediately recognize it as having been made by Peeta’s hands.

So the evenings are the only time that we are both free, since construction teams are encouraged to work for seven days while the weather is fair. After a few weeks, he starts to come over after dinner on most evenings, just to sit and talk with us. One night, I catch him leafing through the family plant book in the reception room as my mother and I finish up in the kitchen.

He looks up guiltily when he spots me. “It was the first normal thing we did together,” he recalls softly.

I nod, because odd as it is, I look back at that time fondly. The two of us had just started to repair our friendship, and even though we had Snow’s threats hanging over us, we still held onto the belief that we could somehow come out of the other side.

“Do you want to add anything to it? I’ve got some paints with me that Delly kept with the rest of my belongings from Thirteen.”

I shake my head, but as he leaves later that night, I call out to him. “Can you bring your paints with you tomorrow?”

When he arrives the following day, I show him the pages of a new book that I have started by myself. Dr. Aurelius had agreed to my request for parchment paper, but it took another few weeks before I could bring myself to trawl through my mind for memories to commit to ink. I had started with the little things. Greasy Sae’s wild dog stew in the Hob. The look on Rory’s face the first time that Gale and I brought home a juvenile deer. Posy hiding amongst the tall flowers of the meadow.

But a few nights ago, I recalled the conversation that I had with Madge after the first reaping, when she gave me the pin. And then the discussion when I returned home, and she told me that it had belonged to her aunt. I had hastily scribbled down the name in case I forgot it later - _Maysilee Donner_.

Peeta takes it all in silently. A minute later, he sets out his pencils and paints, and begins to sketch the mockingjay pin at the bottom of the page.

*

In reality, Cato was a seventeen year old boy the last time that I saw him – but in my dreams, he joins all of the other tributes from the 74th Games as a wolf mutt. Peeta, too. They’re all snapping at my heels as I race through the forest, while high up in the sky, the mockingjays whistle Rue’s four-note tune. I reach a clearing, and the trees make way to reveal Rue, still standing but with Marvel’s spear piercing her stomach. She looks at me helplessly. I am almost at her side when the jabberjays arrive, saturating the air with the sound of Prim screaming.

Prim’s voice slowly morphs into another, a much deeper tone that calls my name just as insistently. I sit up abruptly, grasping wildly for _something_ to hold on to, something to tell me that I am a part of _this_ world and not the monstrous one that comes to life beneath my eyelids. My fists do find purchase, and I open my eyes to find them buried in Peeta’s shirt as he watches me with a wild expression.

“I heard you,” he whispers, desperation and sorrow clear in his voice. The timely gush of wind reminds me that I had decided to leave my window open when I came up to bed. “I had to come and find you.”

Before I know what I’m doing, I lean forward and pull him to me. He doesn’t resist, and I quickly bury my head in his shoulder, breathing hard against his throat.

“Don’t you wake up your mother?”

I shake my head. “She’s used to it. I got them before the Games anyway, because of my father. And then after, she didn’t know how to help, so she just tried to ignore it.”

He moves his hand to caress the small of my back in small, steady circles, and slowly I begin to feel the tension leave my body.

“I broke a glass panel in the back door to get in,” he reveals guiltily. “Tell your mother that I’m sorry in the morning, will you?”

I want to ask him to stay. I want to say that he can tell her himself in the morning if he stays.

Instead, I simply reply, “Okay.”

We talk for a little longer, and I ask him if he still paints his nightmares. He tells me that Haymitch has given him the study room to use as an art studio, and made him promise that his paintings won’t leave those confines. “He hates seeing those images just as much as I do.”

When he finally rises to leave, I find myself seizing his hand before he can retreat too far. “Thank you.”

“Anytime.”

*

My mother doesn’t ask about the book, but she hears us talking and must surely know what we are doing. When the time comes to write Prim’s pages, I call out to inquire if she will come and sit with us.

We cry together as the words tumble out of our mouths in no particular order. _She would happily feed Lady more than she would eat herself. She was so pleased the first time that we managed to make cheese from the goat’s milk that she had tears in her eyes. She had such a talent for healing, much more than my mother had at that age._

After Prim, it gets a little easier to work on the book, though I find myself returning to her pages almost every day to add new memories. Peeta recites tales of his family with moist eyes, but holds his tears inside as I write down his words. He leaves early, telling me that he’ll draw the sketches for those particular pages tomorrow. I know that he needs time on his own right now.

I watch him make his way to Haymitch’s house from the window. When I let the curtain drop back in its place, my mother is standing in the doorframe.

She smiles softly. “I’m happy for you.”

“Happy for what?” I ask, confused.

“After everything that the two of you have been through, it’s nice to see you doing something normal. A conventional courtship.”

“That’s not what this is,” I say quickly. “We’re just getting to know each other again. Helping each other.” _Protecting each other_ , I add silently.

She gives me an uncertain look, but then shakes her head as if to dismiss whatever thought had been in there. Instead, she simply says, “Whatever it is, it’s nice to see you smiling again, Katniss.”

Later, as I try to sleep, those three words whirl around in the dark in front of my eyes. _A conventional courtship_. Is that what this is? Is that what Peeta wants?

Is that what _I_ want?

The truth is that I don’t know. I have never known what I want when it comes to Peeta. Only what I _didn’t_ want – a romance in front of the country when we were sixteen year old tributes, a false engagement when we became victors, and an unyielding enemy when we were seventeen year old soldiers.

I try to define what it is that I want from him now. Companionship. A hand to hold when I need it. A shoulder to cry on. A comment or a gesture that makes me smile and forget where I am and what has happened, if only for a moment.

He already provides all of those things. As sleep finally begins to take me, I wonder what I would do should he ever kiss me again.

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

By the time the leaves begin to change color, all of the buildings around the Main Square have been rebuilt and we are trading in money once more instead of favors and IOUs. Peeta tenders an application for the premises that has risen where the old bakery once stood.

“Seems appropriate,” he says simply. But I know that it means more to him than he lets on and wonder if it is his way of honoring his family, by rebuilding the Mellark presence in District Twelve.

His application is approved within a day, on the stipulation that the building be used as a bakery and living space only. He even receives a government grant to buy resources and kick-start the business.

Haymitch and I help to move his meager belongings into the apartment on the top floor. While he waits for machinery and ovens to arrive from the Capitol, Peeta decides to make do with the modest kitchen in the living quarters, and prepares the stock that he will need for the following morning. Haymitch and I unpack his bags and scatter furnishings that we brought along from our own homes.

We leave him late in the evening and walk back to Victors’ Village in silence for most of the journey. It is only broken when the ominous gates come into view under the light of my torch.

Haymitch clicks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “We should take those down. The sign, too. No use for them anymore.”

I start to veer towards my own home when he calls my name. Stopping, I turn to face him.

“How are the two of you?”

I’m not sure if he means me and my mother, or me and Peeta.

“You and the boy,” he clarifies when I don’t respond.

“Fine,” I tell him, somewhat defensively.

“He gets these…flashbacks,” Haymitch reveals with a sigh. “Ever seen them?”

I shake my head.

“Paralyzes him. He can’t move or speak or do anything until they’re over. Hasn’t happened for a while, but now that he’s on his own, who knows how that mind of his is going to cope. You’ll check up on him, won’t you?”

“I will. But you should too,” I add.

He snorts in amusement. “I will. But something tells me that he’d rather see you than me. ‘Night, sweetheart.”

When I leave for work the following morning, I notice that both the sign and the gates have been removed and lie abandoned by the side of the first house in the Village. I return in the evening to find that they are no longer there either, and hope that someone will melt down the iron and put it to better use.

*

I have a few weeks to settle in a new routine of working, hunting and visiting the bakery before I can feel myself starting to unravel. I begin to dread the end of the fall season and the sight of bare trees, because I know exactly what this signifies, no matter how hard I try to avoid thinking about it. The end of fall means that it will have been a year since I set foot in the Capitol as a member of Squad 451. A year since the final throes of war.

A year since my sister died.

My mother begins to withdraw from me. I begin to withdraw from everyone – I can’t seem to stop myself. One Friday, Haymitch and Peeta and Sae arrive for our weekly group dinner to find the door locked and the two of us hiding in our respective rooms. Peeta lets himself in through the back – I hadn’t had the presence of mind to lock that door, too – and I recognize his heavy gait as he sets to work in our the kitchen. Sometime later, I hear voices and assume that Sae and Haymitch have returned.

Peeta climbs the stairs and opens my door without knocking. I start to tell him to go away, but he strides quickly to my bed and tugs me gently, but without room for argument, into a seated position. A moment later, he pulls me into a tight hug.

“I know it’s hard,” he murmurs into my hair. “But, in the same way that it’s the little things that make you miss them, it’s the little things that will make life good again. I put together some food. Come and eat with us, Katniss. You don’t have to say anything, you don’t even have to listen to us talk. Just sit and eat a couple of bites with us. It’s just a small thing.”

I really don’t want to, but when he puts it like that, I find it hard to deny him. So I nod shakily against his neck, and he all but carries me out of the bed and sets me on my feet. I am still dressed in my work clothes from this morning, and he kneels down to slip my boots onto my feet before rising and taking my hand into his.

We descend the stairs slowly, my legs suddenly feeling weak despite being well enough during the day. My mother is already at the table, Haymitch sitting closer to her than usual. I wonder if he had the unenviable task of coaxing her to dinner, or whether it had been Sae.

The meal is a quieter affair than usual, with the exception of Maisie and Peeta discussing the latest picture book that she has acquired from the neighbors’ children. When we are all full, Sae and Maisie deal with the dirty dishes, while Haymitch leads my mother to the front reception room. Peeta takes me to the study at the back of the house and shuts the door quietly.

“This is probably bad timing,” he begins, “but Haymitch convinced me to bring it over…and it’s here now…”

I look up to see him gesturing at the wall behind me. Turning, I notice a canvas painting that rests against the wooden frame of the fireplace. I can tell immediately that it is from his hand, his uniquely vivid style making the colors seem as though they are bursting out of the surface. I step closer to examine the scene that is depicted.

A girl sits with her back to the viewer, her long blond hair tied neatly into a braid that hangs over her spine and disappears out of view. On the table in front of her, an otherwise shabby-looking cat holds an expression of sheer bliss as the girl’s hand is buried in the fur that lines the back of its neck.

_Prim_.

Although I can’t see her face, he has captured her posture and grace beautifully. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I recognize that Peeta couldn’t have painted this from memory – Prim only started wearing her hair like mine in District Thirteen, replacing the two braids that she had favored when she was younger.

“I see her sometimes in my dreams,” he says behind me. “I don’t know if I ever saw this or not, but this is how I like to remember her. Whenever I wake up from a dream that she’s been in, I feel calmer somehow. Prim always seemed to have that effect on me, especially when we were in Thirteen.”

I whirl around sharply.

His expression changes as he takes in my surprise. “You didn’t know that she came to see me?”

I shake my head.

“The first time was after Finnick’s wedding, after you and I spoke. She was so angry that the doctors couldn’t stop her. She barged right in and yelled at me. I can’t even remember what she said now, I only recall being stunned at how angry she was. And then it just seemed to evaporate, and she apologized. When the doctors realized that I didn’t have an adverse effect from seeing her, they let her come back once a week. We would talk about little things from home. Teachers at school, the bakery, visiting the mines. We never talked about you, but I knew that you were always on her mind. That you were the reason she was there.”

My legs suddenly feel weak again, and I find them propelling me forward before they lose all energy. His arms envelop me as I slump against him, and he strokes my hair as I let my tears fall onto his shirt.

“I thought about planting some primroses at the side of the house,” he continues quietly, “but then I read the plant book and realized that they were probably dying back for the winter right about now, so I’d struggle to recognize them. Figured it would be better to wait for spring, when they’re in bloom.”

I give him a distracted nod. It’s a lovely gesture, one that I wish I had thought of myself.

“So I decided to paint something instead. You don’t have to keep it,” he adds quickly.

“I want to,” I manage to whisper into his shoulder. “I want to keep it.”

On the actual day of the anniversary, my mother and I go to my father’s grave. Although we never received his remains from the accident, the authorities offered up a small plot of land in the graveyard where we could erect a headstone. I haven’t been here in years. I watch as my mother carefully etches Prim’s name and details below my father’s.

I find myself mouthing the words that I sang for Rue as she lay in my arms for the last time. My mother stands, and in silent agreement, we both begin to sing.

_Here is the place where I love you_.

*

By mid-December, the snow falls too heavily for Peeta to make his way to the Village in the evenings, and I begin to miss his company. The construction work has been scaled back, partly because of the weather and partly due to the fact that the initial rebuilding plans have been completed. Many of the new houses still require superficial work on the interior, and I soon add wall-plastering and plumbing to my catalog of skills. Prey is scarce, but I still trek into the woods twice a week, and usually return with something to hand over to my mother for dinner.

I find myself gravitating towards the bakery on my free afternoons. Peeta has hired two people to work for him, both new settlers from District Thirteen. He waves at me from behind the counter before rushing into the kitchen, and I give Bevan a polite smile when he lifts the partition for me.

After a few days of sitting passively as Peeta works, I offer to help. He smiles at me gratefully and shows me how to mimic whatever task he is doing at the time. Together, we get through his prep work in half the time.

Gale calls towards the end of the month and tells me that he is coming to Twelve to film the “restoration”.

“I thought you didn’t like propos,” I comment critically.

He sighs, and I can’t help but smile, because teasing him about his job had been the first key step on the long road towards repairing our friendship.

“It’s not a propo,” he says tiredly, as if he’s had to rehearse the line. “It’s a documentary about the rebuilding of our country.”

He describes how they have already filmed restoration projects in the Capitol and District Two, and then asks me to suggest sites and projects that they could report on here.

The thought hits me so suddenly that I have to suck in a breath. “Gale…you’re not coming here to film _me_ , are you?”

“No,” he tells me quickly. “I promise I’ll keep you out of it.”

I whisper my gratitude.

I am working on the morning that he and his camera crew arrive on the weekly train, and stop at the bakery on my way home, like I always do.

“Gale should be here by now,” I tell Peeta as he rushes from one corner of the kitchen to another.

He crouches down to peer through the glass door of the smaller oven, and I wonder if he is deliberately avoiding my gaze as he speaks. “I guess so.”

“Are you still coming over for dinner?” I try to keep my voice as neutral as I can, but I can’t help feeling anxious. Peeta and I have made so much progress, and the last thing I want to do is to make him uncomfortable. But he has such a big role in my life now that I don’t want to exclude him from this.

“Do you still want me to?” he asks carefully, finally straightening to his full height and turning to me.

I don’t hesitate. “Yes.”

His expression softens, and I let out the breath that I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Then, I’ll be there.”

Gale is sitting at the kitchen table with my mother when I arrive home. His camera crew is not with him, thankfully. His hair has been cropped close to the scalp, and he certainly seems a healthier weight than he had done here in Twelve for someone so tall. “You look different,” I blurt out.

He grins, perhaps relieved that seeing him in person hasn’t made me run for the woods. “I _feel_ different.”

We talk while we help my mother prepare the evening meal. Our conversation is much like the ones that we have shared over the telephone, carefully focused on trivial and safe topics and steering clear of anything that might force us to revisit our thoughts and actions during the war.

Peeta keeps his word, and shakes hands with Gale when he enters our kitchen. My mother seems to take pity on me – or, perhaps all of us – and carries the conversation for much of the evening, inquiring about every member of the Hawthorne family, life in District Two, the latest political developments, and anything else that comes to her mind. Gale asks Peeta about the bakery, and though he responds enthusiastically, I feel that I know him well enough to recognize that he isn’t himself right now. That he is wearing the mask that gained so much use during our time together as Hunger Games’ victors. In the back of my mind, I can practically hear Effie’s voice – _chins up, smiles on_.

We are midway through another of Peeta’s modest but delicious cakes when I reach for his hand under the table, squeezing my fingers gently around his. I hope that he understands the message that I’m trying to convey. _Thank you_.

When he cradles my hand in return, I imagine that he is saying, _you’re welcome_.

*

My mother and I work hard throughout the month to recover from Prim’s anniversary, to win those little victories that Peeta talked about. I go hunting more often than I had done during the fall, and am fortunate enough to run into several groups of wild turkeys. Sae helps me to clean and distribute them so that the entire Village and some of the newer surrounding houses receive a share.

My mother has completed her preliminary work for the medicines factory and delivered her report to the Capitol. She would have been at a loss – and I am certain that I would have lost her – had it not been for the timely arrival of Dr. Marcus as the district’s new physician. Peeta had encouraged her to apply for the vacant nursing position, and she started work the following day.

Slowly, we both learn ways to keep ourselves tethered to the world and not allow grief to submerge us for too long.

Peeta closes the bakery for the first day of the New Year, and accepts my mother’s invitation to spend time with us. I don’t want to work on the memory book today, telling him that this is a day for new beginnings, and instead we switch on the television. Gale had told my mother that a number of recordings had been found in the Capitol from before the Dark Days and are slowly being restored. The first round of footage is being shown today.

It turns out to be a news reel, and I find myself leaning forward to take in the sights and sounds of life before the First War. I wonder if the people on screen were happy, or if they knew what was coming. I wonder if any of them could have prevented the war, could have stopped the death and devastation that almost eliminated us. I wonder if any of them could have prevented the Hunger Games.

Peeta breaks the silence when it ends and my mother switches off the TV. “Strange to see it with your own eyes, isn’t it?”

“Probably why the Capitol kept the reels hidden all these years,” my mother suggests. “They wouldn’t have wanted us to see what life used to be like, in case we got any ideas that contradicted their own.”

She gets up to make tea, and Peeta and I wile away the rest of the afternoon playing cards and discussing his plans for the bakery.

In the evening, we go to Sae’s for dinner, which proves to be a large enough affair to fill both the kitchen and reception room with Village residents. And though I have never enjoyed socializing on such a big scale, I find myself engaging and conversing more than I thought possible.

Peeta pulls me to one side as we walk back to our home. My mother glances back but doesn’t say anything, choosing instead to slip inside the house and allow us some privacy. “I really enjoyed this evening. I just wanted to say thanks.”

I shrug. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You seemed content…and it rubbed off on me,” he explains with a smile. “I definitely felt more comfortable than I thought I would. Almost happy. I can’t remember the last time I saw you like that, either. Maybe I haven’t? I mean, we only ever interacted after we were reaped, and neither of us was ever…“

“Happy?” I suggest.

He grins. “I was going to say comfortable, but yeah, that works too. We didn’t have many reasons to be happy once we got on that train, did we? This evening was the first time that I saw you smiling and talking in a crowd just because you wanted to, not because you had to.”

I turn away to take in the view of the ever-changing town in the valley below us, the new rooftops blanketed with a thin layer of snow that fell earlier today. Risking a sideways glance in his direction, I find Peeta watching me.

“You’re not the girl on fire anymore.”

“And you’re not the Baker's boy.”

His lips twist into a rueful smile, probably recalling the one and only time that Caesar Flickerman had used that phrase during our victory interview. But it is how I’ve always thought of him in my mind – the boy with the bread - at least the person that he was before he was reaped. I have to admit that I am starting to prefer the person that he is now, a young man who doesn’t idolize me, yet still cares for me.

“I like spending time with you.” His gaze drops to the ground, almost as if it is a confession.

“I like it, too.”

His smile is shy and sweet, and while I’m not sorry that the naïve boy who was infatuated with me is gone, I am pleased to see this remnant of him.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Katniss,” he says finally, and begins the long walk back to the center of town.

“Peeta?”

He turns mid-step. “Yeah?”

Before I can talk myself out of it, I run the short distance that separates us and grab the lapels of his winter jacket with both hands.

I kiss him. Just a touch of my lips on his, really, more chaste than anything we shared in front of the cameras. But it is also more affection than I have shown him since being in the Capitol, since I tried to help him fight the horrific images that threatened to overpower him.

When I lean back, his expression is neutral. A mask. I hate that he has to wear this armor with me – I hate even more that this is something I can’t blame entirely on the Capitol.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” I murmur as I let him go.

He turns silently, and I stare at his retreating figure long after he disappears into the dark.

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

I can’t stomach the idea of making my regular visit to the bakery the following day, and instead choose to go on a walk in the woods. The fence has long been torn down and the metal reused for many of the building projects. The lack of a perimeter makes it easier for me to avoid the remnants of the meadow and all that it now hides.

The knock on our front door in the evening shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. My mother invites Peeta in with a welcoming smile, which only falters when she observes the tense look that the two of us exchange.

She leaves us moments later, saying that she will be in the study if we need her. Peeta waits until we hear the sound of the door closing at the end of the hallway before moving to the armchair to take a seat.

“We should talk about last night,” he finally says.

“It’s okay,” I mutter, trying to maintain eye contact but failing miserably. “It was a mistake. Won’t happen again.”

He groans and moves both hands to cover his face. A moment later, his fingertips begin to scrub at his skin around his eyes. He must be tired after a long day, and I imagine that the last thing he wanted to do was make the uphill trek to the Village.

“I can’t do this again, Katniss.” His voice is muffled by his palms, but I can decipher the words well enough to make my chest ache. “I _won’t_ do this again.”

“Fine.”

It’s all I can manage before that dull ache gathers strength and begins to move up to my throat, and I know that I need to get away from him.

I bolt from my seat, and think that I’m safe when my hand falls on the banister of the staircase. But then I feel his arms circle my waist, and my feet are hoisted into the air. Afraid to catch my mother’s attention, I bite back a shout, and instead claw wildly at his wrists.

Peeta doesn’t relent though, and carries me the short distance back to the reception room, setting me down before closing the door firmly.

“You _need_ to listen to me.” His voice is hard, but when I risk looking at him, the expression that greets me is surprisingly soft. Soft and pained and pleading.

I nod, just once.

His shoulders visibly relax. “What I meant – what I should have said – is that I’m not going to play the guessing game again. So I’m going to tell you what I want, and I would like you to do the same. How does that sound?”

Another nod.

Peeta takes a deep breath, and now it is his turn to keep his eyes fixed on the ground. “I never stopped loving you. That was part of the problem really, because loving you at the same time as hating you was…exhausting. So, I had to get away from you, to have the chance to figure things out for myself. To work out who I was without you. After the…” He falters, clearly searching for the right word, even if I know immediately what event he is will refer to.

“After the fire, I worked with the head doctors while I was still in the Burn Unit. And then I moved to the Mental Health Unit in the same hospital. I spoke to other people, Johanna and Haymitch mostly, but I didn’t see any news about your trial until it was over, and it was over a month before Dr. Aurelius would let me re-watch the Games. So, I went a long time without seeing you or hearing about you, and I think it really helped.”

He breathes deeply once more, his eyes fluttering towards me and away again. “And then you called Johanna, and it felt _so_ good to talk to you liked I used to, to hear your voice again. But the more we spoke, the more you started to take over my thoughts and my life. I didn’t want to leave the house in case I missed your call, I didn’t help Johanna like I had been. I stopped painting and my nightmares started getting worse. So I moved on, to Delly’s, where I knew I could hide from you for a little while.”

My stomach sinks at the thought of Peeta wanting to run from me, even when he knows that I’m not the murderous mutt that they made him think I was.

“Only, I couldn’t hide from you there, either,” he continues. “Because I realized that you were in my head, and you were such a big part of my life that I couldn’t cut you out. I’ve already lost too much, Katniss, and if I keep losing more…well, then I don’t know if there’s going to be anything left. So, that’s why I came back. I thought that even if you and I went our separate ways, I would still have Haymitch and my memories from growing up here. I could still help to rebuild my home.

“But, there was one thing I hadn’t thought of, and that was the effect that seeing and talking to you every day would have on me. It seems that I just can’t quit you,” he finishes softly, still refusing to look at me.

I search my mind for something to say in return, and eventually settle on the only words that feel right. “I kissed you because I wanted to. Because I can’t quit you either.”

I recognize the precise moment that it sinks in, because those intense blue eyes meet mine and he holds out his arms for me. I melt into them gratefully, closing my eyes when I feel his lips press into my forehead. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to think last night.”

His mouth lowers to my left cheek. “I didn’t know if it was real.”

“It was,” I whisper.

He moves to my right cheek. “I know that now.”

We spend the rest of the evening curled together in the armchair, but not talking or kissing or caressing. Just reveling in the warmth and safety of each other, as well as the promise of so much more. We finally separate when my mother opens the door, and Peeta tells us that he has an early start the following morning.

We try to continue as normal for the next few weeks. Peeta makes the journey to our house in the Village when he can, and I visit the bakery in my spare time.

We begin to kiss, infrequently at first. Sometimes, it’s a peck on the cheek at the bakery, hidden from the eyes of customers and staff. At other times, it’s a languid rediscovery of each other’s mouths in the privacy of his living quarters.

It doesn’t take long for me to reach the point where I am unable to greet him without a kiss, and make increasingly feeble excuses to get him alone. He laughs into my mouth on the occasions that I fail to hide my desperation.

“My mother thinks that we’re _courting_ ,” I tell him after one of these encounters, suddenly feeling nervous. I had waited for the bakery to close before following him upstairs, laughing as he pressed my body against the door and kissed me with as much hunger as I had shown him in the afternoon.

We’re currently sat at the table with our empty plates in front of us. He thinks about my words for a moment before smiling softly. “I suppose that we are. If that’s what you want?” he asks hastily.

“It is.”

I can’t help but laugh at his obvious surprise at my words. “Real,” I say, pre-empting his question.

He smiles down at his plate. “Do you think this is what it would have been like? If we hadn’t been reaped for the Games?”

“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “Probably not. I mean, we didn’t even talk to each other before the Games. You would have married some Merchant girl and I would have…I would have lived with my mother and Prim in the Seam.”

He looks at me curiously, and again I can anticipate his question. _Wouldn’t you have married Gale?_ “I never wanted to marry _anyone_ ,” I tell him. “I never wanted to love someone the way my mother did, only to lose them, and lose myself in the process. And I certainly never wanted to have children when their names could have been reaped.”

Peeta shrugs. “You might have changed your mind as you got older.”

“I might have,” I concede. “But either way, would you and I have spoken if it hadn’t been for the Games?”

“I’d like to think so,” he says in earnest. “I think that I would have eventually worked up the courage to speak to you, and that you would have given me a chance. I think we could have been friends,” he adds quietly.

“Just friends?” I tease – though as soon as the words leave my mouth, I realize that I actually do want to know the answer.

He grins. “Fine. _Courting_.”

“So, what would we have done in this imaginary world where we were courting?”

Instantly, I feel the mood change. The smile drops from his lips as he looks at me, carefully considering his next words.

“Well, first I would lure you into regular conversation with my easygoing charm and extraordinary baking ability.” I roll my eyes, but that doesn’t deter him. “Maybe you would still trade, or maybe you would come into the bakery as a customer. Either way, we would talk as often as possible. I would persuade you to meet me for dinner, like we do now. We would talk and get to know each other, and you would realize that whenever something good happened in your life, I would be the one that you wanted to share it with. And whenever something bad happened, I would be the one you turn to for comfort.”

So far, he hasn’t said anything that I can refute. I try to keep my expression blank, but he still beams, knowing that he is winning this particular game.

“One day, I would work up the nerve to kiss you. You would be surprised at first, but then you would kiss me back.”

“Are you certain about that?”

He continues as if I haven’t spoken, dropping the smile once more to give me an intense look. “Eventually, we would kiss until we couldn’t stop.”

The breath catches in my throat. I am propelled back in time, to the Quarter Quell arena – to a hunger that I hadn’t wanted to suppress. I can almost feel his lips on mine, his hands roaming across my back as tendrils of pleasure shoot outward from my chest and stomach to my extremities.

His voice, now low and rough, brings me back to the present. “So, which stage are we at now, Katniss?”

During the period between winning the Games and leaving the Quell arena, Peeta had this way of making me want to appear brave, even if I didn’t feel it. He has this effect on me now, and I find myself pushing the chair back to get to my feet. He mirrors my actions, both of us in a half-dazed state, until we are standing mere inches apart.

“The last one, I think.”

He is stunned, and I would laugh if I wasn’t so acutely aware of the blood pulsing through my body. Because while Peeta has shocked me with his words many times, this must be the first time that I have managed to do the same to him.

“You should know, Katniss,” he begins, but then stops to scratch the back of his neck. I remember this from the Victory Tour, a nervous habit that he had developed after discovering the danger that we were both in. His hand drops as he tries again. “Because we weren’t so great at making our feelings clear the last time…you should know that I’m falling for you again.”

His eyes drop to the floor as the final words tumble out of his mouth. I am reaching for him before I’ve even realized that I have moved, caressing that part of his neck where his own fingers had been only moments ago.

This forces him to look at me, and I know that I have to tell him. I _have_ to say the words out loud – to make them real for both of us.

“I’m falling for you, too.” _Again_ , I add silently.

Peeta gives me a wide but genuine smile, one that I have to return. A moment later, his mouth drops, and I have to wonder whether he is questioning my words. I certainly can’t blame him if he is.

“I watched the Quarter Quell again with Dr. Aurelius,” he says shakily. He has told me this before, and I brace myself for a question or a comment over my behavior. Instead, he keeps his gaze fixed on the wall behind me as he speaks. “That final night on the beach? I had to watch it a few times before I remembered how it felt.”

“How did it feel?” I whisper.

“Like it was real – for the first time – for both of us.”

“It was real,” I tell him as I kiss his jaw lightly. “I wanted more.”

He brings his hands up to my shoulders, and for a moment I worry that he wants to push me away. But he merely holds me a few inches away from him so that he can study my face. I understand why when he speaks again.

“And now?”

“I want more now.”

He gives me a distracted nod, before taking my hand into his and leading me to the bedroom. When the door clicks shut, he turns to face me, and I can see his nervous smile.

While we were not entirely innocent during our engagement, we didn’t do much more than let our hands wander experimentally, fumbling in the dark. Now, we are both older, both more certain of what we desire. And for the first time, we both want the same thing.

I wrap my arms around his neck and pull him to me. He doesn’t resist, meeting my mouth eagerly with his as our bodies tangle. I don’t know how long we stay like that, wrapped around each other, but I lightly push him away when he starts to walk me backwards to the bed.

“Can I use your phone?” All of the new homes in Twelve have them, and I know that Peeta has been using his to talk to Dr. Aurelius, as well as Johanna and Delly. “I should let my mother know that I won’t be coming home.”

His surprise reminds me of that we hadn’t actually discussed what _more_ meant and what would happen tonight, but before I can explain myself, Peeta leaves to retrieve the telephone. He returns and hands it to me, before stepping back.

“I’ll wait here,” he tells me, suddenly shy.

I walk out into the hallway to call my mother, explaining awkwardly that I’ll be staying at the bakery. She simply tells me to be careful, though whether she means with my heart or my body, I have no idea.

When the call disconnects, I start to feel anxious. Peeta seems to know that I have finished and peers into the hallway to watch as I place the phone back in its holder on the wall.

His touch is surprisingly tender when I finally do go back to him, his fingers grazing my cheek gently. “It’s okay if you’ve changed your mind,” he tells me gently. “We could just sleep.”

I don’t respond, choosing instead to brush past him and into the bedroom.

Making my way to the bed, I turn and perch at the edge, looking up to find him still standing in the doorway. “Come here.”

He hesitates, and I wonder if I am going about this the wrong way. I think back to earlier, when he said that we hadn’t been good at expressing our feelings the last time. So, I take a deep breath and try again.

“I want you to come and sit with me, Peeta.”

His steps are steady when he finally does move. As he lowers himself to the bed, I take one of his hands into both of my own.

“You want me. Real or not real?”

His voice is low, but firm. “Real.”

“I want you. Real or not real?”

“Shouldn’t _you_ be the one answering that?” he asks with a raised eyebrow.

“What do _you_ think my answer would be?”

His eyes search my expression for a long moment. “I think…I _hope_ that it’s real.”

“It is,” I tell him as I move my hand along his arm, across his shoulder and up to the back of his neck. I curl my fingers around to encourage him to face me, making sure that we maintain eye contact before I continue. “I want you.”

There is no hesitation after that – from either of us. We have been starved of each other for so long that I doubt we would be able to contain ourselves even if we had wanted to.

It is only when he finally lifts my top over my head that I falter. “The fire,” I mutter, following his gaze as he takes in my scars.

He withdraws, but when I risk looking up at him, I realize that he only wants enough space to remove his own shirt. Returning to his original position, his bare skin radiates heat as it touches mine. “I have just as many.”

He does, but precisely how he received them is a discussion for another time, because I still can’t bring myself to talk about that day. Not even with Peeta.

To distract myself, I move into a lying position and reach for him. He comes willingly, covering my body with his before dropping his lips onto mine. I am too enthralled by the way his mouth feels on mine to even notice that his hand has slipped between us, and I reward him with a loud gasp when he pushes the cup of my bra upward and traps my nipple between his fingertips, twisting firmly.

“You’re going to have to help me out, Katniss,” he tells me, before capturing my earlobe between his teeth and tugging gently. “Will you show me what you like?”

I begin to answer, but Peeta uses that precise moment to roll his hips into mine, making me gasp again. “ _That_. I like that.”

So he does it again. And again and again, until I am desperately circling my own hips in time to meet his.

He seems to realize that it isn’t enough at the same time as I do, and through silent agreement, we reach for the fastenings of each other’s pants. Winning this race, I push the fabric over the curve of his ass, distracting him from his own task when I pause to grab rough fistfuls of him.

He groans in response before capturing my mouth once more. We continue this way for some minutes before I manage to move my hands to his chest and push him up.

“Pants off.”

He agrees, rolling to my side and pushing them down to his ankles. In two movements he manages to push his shoes, socks and pants off, first from one foot and then the other. The sounds of his shoes clunking against the floor send laughter bubbling up from my throat, and Peeta glances across sheepishly. I sober again a moment later, and purposefully avoid taking in the sight of him, lying next to me in just his undershorts. Instead I mimic his actions – albeit less hastily – and leave myself in only underwear, too.

We turn onto our sides to face each other, and now for the first time, I can see that he is just as nervous as I am.

“Do you want to try again?” he asks, his gaze drifting down my body to express his meaning.

I answer with my actions, edging closer until I can use my weight to roll us both. He moves willingly onto his back, his hands guiding my hips insistently until they’re pressed into his. I concentrate on trying to recapture the sensation that I had felt earlier, rolling over him experimentally until a jolt of pleasure runs through me.

A whimper escapes from my lips, and Peeta looks up at me in barely concealed delight. He begins moving again, tilting his hips upwards with even more enthusiasm than I had done when I was underneath him.

It feels as good as it did with our clothes on, but I soon have to admit to myself that I need yet more. More contact. More heat. More Peeta.

Reaching for the waistband of his shorts, I give him a questioning look. The way his throat glides as he swallows is so mesmerizing that I almost miss his nod of assent, and he moves his own hands to rest near mine.

Together, we lower the fabric, and he helps by lifting his hips off the bed so that I can push down far enough to free his erection.

And now…now, I don’t know what to do.

Peeta seems to sense my anxiety, calling my name to get my attention. He gives me that smile again, the one that’s precisely the right mixture of sweet and shy – and maybe a little vulnerable, too. The smile that made me trust him – and, if I’m honest, the smile that should have alerted me to the fact that while I had been pretending to be in love, Peeta certainly hadn’t been.

I am still staring at his mouth when he answers the question that I given voice to. “Do whatever makes you feel good,” he says softly.

It’s such a _Peeta_ thing to say, both the old and the new version of him, and only serves to strengthen the certainty that I feel in being here with him.

So, I reposition my legs and roll my pelvis over him. The contact is light but enough to have us both groaning and looking at each other in wonder. Peeta lets out a puff of elated laughter and nods eagerly. “Keep going.”

I don’t need to be told – my hips have already resumed that circular motion that brought so much enjoyment through the layers of clothing. Now, there is only the thin cloth of my panties that separates us, and I can feel my pleasure building at a rapidly increasing rate.

I manage to make only one more decision before all rational thought leaves my mind – I reach down and swipe the damp fabric of my underwear to one side. I can feel Peeta, so hot and smooth and hard right where I need him, and it is this that finally sends me careening off the edge.

The only word that occupies my mind now is _yes_ , and I fail to bite it back when it travels to my mouth. It comes out riding the tail of rickety breaths as my entire body shatters in the most luxurious way possible.

When I finally regain control of myself, I see Peeta looking up at me with that same delighted expression. “That was amazing.”

I can barely moan my agreement as I lower myself to the mattress beside him. Still breathing hard, I take a minute to enjoy the sight of his eyes travelling leisurely down the length of my body, his hunger plain to see.

When he drags his gaze back up to meet mine, I reach for his still prominent erection, but he gently takes my hand into his and brings them both to rest on my stomach. “I’m fine for now.”

He must read my confused expression, because he grins before nuzzling my cheek. “I don’t want this to be over just yet, and I’m going to need a few minutes to calm myself down after that. I’d like to have a little more fun with you, if that’s alright?”

My eyes widen almost involuntarily. “What kind of fun?”

He lowers his mouth to my ear as if we’re about to share a secret. “Do you make yourself come when you’re on your own?”

His lips are at my temple when I can finally muster the courage to give him an affirmative nod, and I know that he can feel it.

“Show me.”

I hesitate, staring resolutely at the far corner of the ceiling, because I know that I won’t be able to refuse him anything once I look into those eyes of his.

“You don’t have to be embarrassed – I just need to see what works for you,” he explains softly.

I close my eyes as my hand drifts across my abdomen, then detours south. Peeta chooses that moment to lower his mouth onto my clavicle and suck hard, and it’s all the encouragement that I need. I slip two fingers beneath my panties and into my folds, beginning the anticlockwise circular motion that I perfected long ago.

Peeta’s voice – returning to that secretive whisper – feels far away when he speaks, and I realize that he has pulled away a little, probably to watch. “What do you think of when you do this?”

The word falls from my lips before I can even think of what the consequences might be. “You.” In my mind’s eye, I am taken back to that sparse District Thirteen compartment, alone for hours on end with only my jumbled thoughts for company. Thoughts of Peeta, tangled up with feelings of regret and longing and anxiety and lust.

I feel his groan reverberate against my throat when he leans over me again. “For me, it was only ever you.”

I am still riding the wave of my last orgasm, and I know it won’t take long for me to crest again. So when he asks me if I’m close, I nod desperately. My eyes burst open when he lays his hand over mine, but on top of my underwear. I understand why when he starts mimicking my movements, perfectly matching the pace and intensity that I have set.

My eyelids are starting to drift shut again when he moves lower. I gasp when he nudges the fabric to one side and dips a fingertip inside me.

“Katniss?”

I can only nod. His finger is thicker than mine, and when he probes deeper, my hips buck involuntarily. I don’t have time to dwell on the feeling though, because that ripple of pleasure that begins in the pit of my stomach quickly spirals outward and sets my second orgasm in motion. I am only dimly aware of his low groan as my muscles flex and contract around his finger, my back arching up from the mattress as I cry out in relief.

I slump back down, closing my eyes to the room, and to Peeta, as I try to gain control of my breathing and my body once more. Feeling the mattress shift, I raise my eyelids in time to see him bring the finger that had been inside me to his lips. I watch with a mixture of curiosity and embarrassment as he sucks the moisture from his digit. _My_ moisture.

He also looks a little uncomfortable by the time he finishes, so I try to distract us both by moving my hand to his groin. I caress his erection with the back of my hand, and his entire body jerks at the contact.

“I’m going to need your help, too,” I say timidly.

He takes my hand into his, a question in his eyes. _Are you sure?_

I respond by turning my wrist to wrap my palm around his cock, enjoying the way his mouth widens in pleasure. Moving my hand up and down experimentally, I ask for his help again. “Like this?”

“Tighter,” he breathes.

I comply, contracting my fingers as I travel from base to tip, and am rewarded with a low moan.

I barely have a steady rhythm set when he whispers another word. “Faster.”

This time I ignore him for a moment, choosing instead to use my body to push him onto his back. I shift as best as I can so that I’m lying partly on my elbow but mostly on him, his thigh trapped between both of mine. And then I follow his request, rolling my hips over his good leg to match the new tempo of my hand.

Peeta nods his head frantically, and I give him a pleased smile in return.

When his hips snap as though it’s an involuntarily movement, I know that he is close. He cries out a moment later, and I watch in fascination as he screws his eyes shut and tilts his head back. The long sweat-lined curve of his throat catches my attention, and I am idly making plans to run my tongue along it when I feel warm fluid on my hand, reminding me of the source of his euphoria.

I reach for the nearest item of clothing with my clean hand, which turns out to be Peeta’s T-shirt. But before I can begin to wipe myself and him, another thought enters my mind, and I find myself bringing my hand up to my mouth and licking it dry, imitating Peeta’s actions from earlier. By the time I’ve finished, he has his eyes open and trained on me, his hard and heavy breaths filling the otherwise noiseless room.

Embarrassed to be caught, I have to avert my gaze, and concentrate on cleaning his abdomen with the shirt. As soon as I’ve finished, Peeta pulls me down on top of him, and I revel in the steady rise and fall of his chest under my own. I let him seize the blanket from beneath my leg so that he can drape it over both of our bodies. I concentrate my energy on ignoring memories of the Training Center and the last time that we were like this, threatening to ruin the moment. I don’t want to think about them right now. I only want to think about the Peeta that is here with me, and all of the new memories that we made together this evening.

The final, enticing thought that I am aware of before sleep takes me is of the new memories we still have yet to make.

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

In the morning, I wake to an empty bed. The faint sounds of clattering trays and closing doors from the floor below tell me that the bakery is already up and running, perhaps even open for business.

I get up and dress myself quickly before using the bathroom. When I return, Peeta is sat on the bed with a small tray in his hands. “Breakfast,” he explains with an easy smile.

We eat the warm bread rolls then and there, and I ignore his laughter as I scramble to pick up crumbs from the blanket after I have finished. When he leaves to return the tray to the small kitchen in the apartment, I move to the dressing table and sit down on the stool to begin tidying my hair.

I hear his footsteps long before his reflection appears behind me in the mirror, and then take in his form as he approaches. He isn’t as stocky as he had been following the intense military training in Thirteen, but the strenuous work that he has to complete for the bakery has made its mark in the way his shoulders and arms strain against the fabric of his shirt. I can’t help but lean back into his touch when he slides his hands over my shoulders and across my chest.

“Don’t braid your hair,” is the roughly spoken instruction. “You don’t have anywhere to be today, and I’m only going to mess it up when I tempt you back to bed.”

I roll my eyes at his reflected grin in the mirror, but it doesn’t discourage him from gliding his fingers lazily over my breasts. Through my clothing, he rubs my nipple lightly, and I bite back a smile and half-heartedly bat his hands away. “My mother –“

“Knows that you’re with me,” he finishes.

“What about the bakery?”

“That’s what I pay the staff for.”

“You hired them so that you could spend your days in bed?” I ask skeptically.

“No,” he concedes. “Because I haven’t had you in my bed until today. Now, I’m just congratulating myself on the excellent foresight that I showed in hiring them.”

This time, I have to laugh. This witty, teasing Peeta is one that I haven’t had many opportunities to see since he returned. Between the anniversary of Prim’s death, Peeta trying to rebuild his family’s business and both of our attempts to impart some sort of structure and sense to our lives, there hasn’t been much time for the lighthearted banter that we used to manage on occasion before the War.

I think back to the previous night yet again. _Is this what it would have been like if we hadn’t been reaped?_ Probably not, not if we had lived in Twelve, in near-poverty.

Then again, here we are in our war-torn district and each carrying more mental and physical scars than we ever thought possible. And we can still find it in us to smile.

“We don’t have to,” Peeta says softly, interrupting my thoughts, and I realize that I may have inadvertently given him reason to think that I don’t want to stay. That I don’t want him.

“It’s not that,” I say in reassurance. “I just don’t want to get in the way of your work.”

There’s more to it, and judging by the look that he gives me, he knows that I am keeping something back. I like this relationship that we have built together, one that is a world away from the fictional romance that we were forced to invent for the Games.

I like that I still have the strength to walk away at the end of the night – or, in this case, the following morning. I like that I have a life that is separate from him.

Because I don’t want to make another person the center of my universe again, only to lose them. First my father, and then my sister. And Peeta was already taken from me once before.

“Katniss.” His voice is still soft, but now has that pleading tilt that I can never ignore.

“I just need a little time.”

It seems to satisfy him, because he bends down to press his lips to my scalp. “Of course.”

But instead of leaving me alone to get ready, Peeta crosses the room and takes a seat at the edge of the bed. Through the mirror, I raise a questioning eyebrow, and receive a sheepish grin in return.

“I’ll go if you want me to.”

I don’t, not really, so I shake my head before reaching behind to divide my hair into three sections. It doesn’t take long for me to arrange the loose braid, glancing at Peeta’s reflection every so often as he watches me. Despite all that we did together the previous night, this feels just as intimate, and I find myself sharing a soft smile with him when we make eye contact. When I finish, I stand and turn, waiting at the dressing table. He doesn’t disappoint me, rising swiftly and crossing the short distance between us.

It is only when he stops in front of me that I recognize the trepidation in his expression – and even in the way he holds himself.

“Will you come back?” he eventually asks.

The word slips out of my mouth before my mind has time to register the implications. “Always.”

I have used the one word that is truly ours – well, _his_ – and that the Capitol could never take away. His exhaled breath of laughter indicates his relief as well as his pleased surprise at my answer.

*

My mother is at work when I arrive home, and I use the time to shower and change before heading across the courtyard to see Haymitch. I don’t bother knocking – I learned how futile that was a long time ago – and close the door loudly after letting myself in, on the slim chance that he will hear my arrival.

I knew enough of his old routine in Twelve to suspect that he would be awake by mid-afternoon, especially during the late spring and early summer, when the earlier dawn eased his mind just enough to allow him to rest his eyes for a few, broken hours. I was also aware of how much his routine had had to change in Thirteen – not just from the prohibition of alcohol, but also from his presence in meetings with Coin and Plutarch during all hours of the day. I suspect that even he kept to the schedule printed on his arm better than I ever did.

Still, I find my step faltering when I walk into the kitchen and find Haymitch sat at the table, alert and sober as he tucks into a bowl of soup.

“You look surprised to see me in my own home,” he comments wryly.

“I didn’t expect to see you presentable,” I mutter. I glance into his bowl to see a familiar-looking concoction. “Has Sae been around?”

“Yup.” He takes in another spoonful, this time with a loud slurp that I know is for my benefit.

I roll my eyes and pull out a chair to sit on. “Little old for you, isn’t she?”

He snorts in amusement. “She’s just being neighborly. You should try it some time.”

I reach across to break off a lump of the bread loaf that he has left in the middle of the table. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

He eyes me with suspicion. “You want something. You always do when you come here.”

I shrug my shoulders. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”

He regards my words for a moment before pointing his spoon in my direction. “You’ve been spending too much time with the boy. He’s a bad influence on you.”

We share a smile, because if there is anyone who understands the influence that Peeta has on me, it’s Haymitch. We are so alike, something that Peeta himself recognized long before either of us did.

“I’m doing alright,” he continues midway through another mouthful. “I have the geese to talk to.”

“Do they talk back?”

“No,” he laughs. “That’s the best thing about ‘em.”

I pick at another lump of bread and let him finish the rest of his meal.

I’m glad to have finished chewing by the time he starts his next sentence. “Your mother won’t leave me alone, either.”

I look at him sharply, and he releases a sharp bark of laughter. “Don’t worry, it’s not like that. Just wants a little company, that’s all.”

I don’t begrudge her that, but it still surprises me that she would turn to Haymitch for it.

He seems to know what I am thinking. “We talked a lot in Thirteen. You wouldn’t know this, of course, you were too busy hiding…”

He trails off when I deliver a withering look. Holding his hands up in surrender, he continues in a softer tone. “Hey. I’m not judging you. We all have our coping mechanisms,” he says with a pointed look at the small bottle of liquor that sits beside the bread board. “I’m just saying that she helped me through the…adjustment.”

I think back to those early days underground and the way Haymitch had looked. I recall that at one point I had thought that he might have been dying.

His next words bring me back to the room with a thud. “You remember Hawthorne getting whipped?”

I’m not likely to forget, and give him a look that says precisely that.

“Remember when I told you that we used to get a lot of floggings, and that your mother was the one we took them to?”

I nod, even though the memory is vague. I had been too caught up in Gale’s pain to pay much attention to anything – or anyone – else.

“There weren’t many Merchants who came to the Seam, but those that did made their mark. I guess that they never really knew what it was like before, but once they were living inside it, they couldn’t handle the despair, the injustice of it all. They always felt like they had to do _something_ , and well, your mother proved to be more useful than most. Her healing skills saved a lot of lives over the years.”

There are times when I forget that Haymitch is Seam, not because of any of his mannerisms, but because I have never associated him with the abject poverty that Gale and I had to grow up with. I don’t doubt his sincerity, but argue my point regardless, in order to make sense of this picture of my mother. “But you would have been living here in the Village from well before my mother got married.”

“I still had friends there,” he reveals quietly. “I tried to keep my distance, for their sake. I didn’t want Snow to find out that there were more people that he could threaten me with. Not that it mattered, I slipped off his radar within a few years of the Quarter Quell, once he knew that I wasn’t going to be a problem for him.

“I used to go down to the Seam a few times a month. And I used to see what happened there, to the ones that were so hungry, so desperate that they had to steal from Town or find a way over the fence. Things got easier when Cray came in – well, easier for some. Worse for others.”

I wince, knowing exactly how worse it got for others, and how close I came to becoming one of those girls.

“It obviously got better for people like your father, who could get into the woods and provide food for their families.”

The question comes to me so suddenly that I wonder why I didn’t ask before. “Did you know my father?”

He shakes his head. “I knew _of_ him, that he was married to the healer and that he was one of the men that went out hunting. For a while, there was a whole group that would trade in the Hob. But eventually, only your father remained.”

His voice gathers distance as memories of my youth in the woods take hold. I feel a pang in my chest that hasn’t visited me in a long time, not since my time in the Capitol, awaiting trial. It feels duller, less raw, than when I think of Prim.

Haymitch’s voice breaks through once more, and I raise my head to look at him. “I tried to help. Gave a lot of money to the Mellarks and the Winstens to increase the grain and oil provided in the tesserae. It was never enough, you see. That was obvious from the moment I turned twelve and had to sign up myself. I spent money in the Hob on things I didn’t want or need, because nobody ever wants to accept charity. They would rather feel like they were earning their keep.

“But with every passing year, every death, whether it was the tributes or someone I grew up with from the Seam, it got harder. I still gave money, right up ‘til the end, but I didn’t leave the house during those final years.”

I know this from my own memories of him before Prim’s name was called – I only ever saw him on Reaping Day. “Is that why you joined the rebellion?”

His mouth quirks into what I have come to recognize as a gesture of admission. “The liquor could never numb the pain entirely. The floggings stopped, but other things got worse. Food got more and more expensive, while wages stayed the same. There were more accidents in the mines. Cray didn’t need to crack down because people were dying every day without him and his Peacekeepers ever lifting a finger.

“It was Johanna’s Games that started it all for me. Snow killed her family, just like he killed mine. When I next went to the Capitol, I knew things were different. Johanna, the other victors, they were all angry. All willing to make a stand.”

I know that there’s more to the story, that the rebellion involved many more people than just the victors. But the mention of his family has hardened Haymitch’s expression, and I understand that he won’t want to dwell on the subject for too long.

“Is this how you expected it to go?” I ask eventually. “When you agreed to be a rebel?”

He shakes his head, reaching for the small bottle of liquor for the first time since my arrival. “Most of the district dead? No, I never expected that. I never _wanted_ that. But we couldn’t go on the way we were. People were dying every day, and it only seemed to be getting worse. Even without you, it would have happened eventually.”

“Maybe less people would have died without my involvement.”

It’s a thought that has occupied my mind for days, even weeks at a time. Would District Twelve have been bombed without my arrow catalyzing the start of war? Would the people that I grew up with still be alive if it wasn’t for me?

Haymitch surprises me by setting the bottle down and screwing the lid back on. “I spent twenty-five years thinking that. Trust me when I say it won’t do you any good.”

We sit in silence for a little longer, each lost in our own thoughts. I shift in my seat, preparing to leave, when he speaks again. “You ever talk to your mother about what happened that day?”

I shake my head, knowing exactly which day he means. We can barely bring ourselves to voice Prim’s name in each other’s company, never mind have a conversation discussing the precise details of her death.

“I don’t think she’ll ever forgive herself, either.”

This takes me by surprise. “Forgive herself for what?”

“For not realizing that Prim was on the medical transport until it was too late. I was there when she barged into Command to scream at Coin.” That droll smile returns. “I saw exactly where you get your temper from.”

I smile in spite of myself, because I haven’t seen or heard of my mother getting angry since my father died. An old memory surfaces, one that contains the image of her furious, red face and my father’s apologetic one, along with the sound of my voice singing _The Hanging Tree_ to Prim.

“I’m just saying,” Haymitch continues, “We can all find reasons to blame ourselves if we look for them. It’s finding reasons to forgive ourselves that’s harder.

“You know that the boy said the same thing to me, back when we were in the Capitol? That less people would have died if he had just swallowed those berries?”

I shake my head again. “What did you say?”

Haymitch shrugs. “I told him as nicely as I could that his family would probably be dead anyway. That poverty and starvation would have hit them eventually, because that’s what the Capitol had always intended. And that you would have been more popular than Finnick Odair with Snow’s patrons.”

I balk, not just at the implications for myself, but also at the mention of Finnick. My mind instantly transports me back to the Capitol sewer where I last saw him.

Exhaling slowly, I know that I have to change the subject before I find myself drowning in the past. “Did you hear about Annie?”

He nods. “A boy, right?”

My voice involuntarily lowers to a whisper. “D’you think he’ll be okay?”

Haymitch shrugs. “Beetee tells me that things are looking up for the other districts. There’s free movement of food and essentials across the country now. There’s that welfare fund that Hawthorne’s been talking about on TV. No more Games. And Annie…well, I’d be lying if I said I knew her. But I knew _of_ her through Finnick, and I gotta say that she’s a hell of a lot stronger than people think she is. She’ll give the kid a good life.”

With that, he reaches for the bottle. I know that our conversation is effectively over and get up to leave.

Haymitch calls out to me as I reach the doorway. “Tell Peeta I need more bread.”

“Pick up the phone and tell him yourself,” I shoot back over my shoulder. “Better still, get out of the house and down to the bakery like everyone else.”

The sound of his rough yet quiet laughter follows me through the hallway, and I smile to myself as I head home.

My mother is preparing food in the kitchen when I arrive, despite it being only mid-afternoon. “Sae and Maisie are coming over for dinner,” she explains.

She accepts my offer to help, and I know immediately that she will want to talk about last night. But, I also know that it’s a conversation that I stand to benefit from, especially if Peeta and I are to continue in the direction that I think that we are headed in.

“We didn’t…we haven’t…” I begin awkwardly.

She seems to take pity on me, and simply nods as if she understands what I am trying to say. “Dr. Marcus has been inquiring about the use of contraceptive shots,” she reveals quietly. “But the Capitol doctors that he knows keep telling him that there’s a shortage and it won’t be resolved until the medicines factory here is up and running.”

Something in her tone prompts my next question. “Don’t you believe that?”

“I’m not sure,” she admits. “There are factories in other districts, the ones that have always provided for the Capitol. Some would have suffered damage during the war, of course, but we have access to other medicines. We have enough morphling to keeps us going for months.”

“Maybe they don’t have what they need to make the shots as well,” I suggest.

“Maybe.” But, she doesn’t sound like she means it as she makes her way to the sink. Rinsing the vegetables under a steady stream of water, she continues. “I watched some television while you were out last night. Have you noticed the new adverts, the ones that involve families?”

I can’t say that I have. I do notice, however, that even my mother has adopted that new word in place of _propos_. I first heard it during a call to Gale a couple of months ago. I now hear the various iterations – advertisements, adverts, ads – on a near-daily basis instead of the other word that I have come to associate with Snow and Coin, rebellion and war.

Though I have to wonder how much a simple change in name can alter its intentions.

My mother switches off the tap and makes her way back to the table. “It was only after the third one that I started to pay attention. A different family every time, but the same underlying message.” She looks up at me. “They want more children, Katniss. They want to encourage people to have families, to build up the population again.”

I feel that old anger rising within me, this time with Paylor’s image swirling through my mind instead of Snow’s or Coin’s. “So, they’re withholding contraception? Nothing ever changes, does it?”

She sighs. “I don’t think they’re deliberately withholding it. We still have emergency contraception – it terminates a pregnancy at the very early stages,” she explains after spotting my confused look. “I just think that they’re not actively encouraging contraception as a preventative measure. Which could make things difficult for you.”

My mother has long been aware of my lack of desire to have children, and my outburst just now only serves to reinforce my stance. Because despite Gale’s assurances, and even Haymitch’s relatively rosy outlook on the future, that underlying sense of fear remains. I am still waiting for the Peacekeepers to knock on my door, for the hunger to set in, for the cameras to surface.

For the Games to begin once more.

“Is there an alternative?” I finally ask.

“That’s partly why I asked Sae to come over tonight,” she says with an uncomfortable look. “One of the colleagues that Dr. Marcus spoke to mentioned the rise of condoms on the black market coming out of District Four. The authorities seem to be turning a blind eye to it at the moment, and while we can’t risk stocking them at the surgery, we can unofficially direct interested parties to Sae, if she agrees to use her contacts.”

I am still processing her words. “District Four?”

“They have the right climate for rubber trees. Seems like there’s been a black market there for years, but now that the transportation system isn’t under government control, it’s beginning to expand.”

I know a little about condoms – or at least, Twelve’s version of them. Ripper had a brother who traded them in the Hob, usually made from animal skins and internal linings that he managed to wrangle from the butcher. I also know that the price they fetched was pretty high, and that not many in the Seam could afford them.

My mother continues as I reach for more potatoes to skin. “The Hob may not exist anymore, but Sae’s still the person to go to for the less legitimate items that you might need. She keeps in touch with some of her co-workers from Thirteen’s kitchens, and they’re scattered all over the other districts now.”

We prepare the rest of the meal in silence, but for perhaps the first time that I can remember, it is a comfortable kind of peace. One where neither of us is searching in vain for something to say, or something to avoid saying.

When our guests arrive, I lead Maisie into the reception room and leave my mother with Sae in the kitchen. Together, we get through the new book that she has brought along with her. I am so engrossed in her progress that I don’t even realize that Sae and my mother have joined us until one of them speaks.

“You’re good with her.” I look up to see Sae smiling at me. “The school’s all set to open in the fall. You should think about working there.”

My mother simply nods in agreement when I glance at her in surprise. I never thought of myself as good with children – I was good with Prim, but I _had_ to be.

Maisie mumbles something about wanting me as her teacher, and I smile down at her as I stroke her hair, just like I used to with Prim. My mother lets us know that dinner is ready, and we make our way to the kitchen.

Later, I wait for Sae and Maisie to leave before retiring to the study and reaching for the telephone. Peeta picks up on the second dial, and though he sounds tired, his voice instantly picks up when he recognizes me.

“Hey. How was the rest of your day?”

“Good.” I tell him about seeing Haymitch, and pass on his request for more bread. Peeta laughs when I relay my instruction for him to go to the bakery and get it himself. When I mention what Sae said before dinner, his enthusiasm is palpable.

“That’s a great idea. You’d be an amazing teacher.”

My own voice is laced with doubt when I reply. “Would I?”

“Sure. You’re compassionate, kind, enthusiastic about the things you care about. You could probably work on your patience a little,” he concedes with a chuckle. “But you know what your best quality would be? That scowl of yours – it’s scary enough to keep anyone in line.”

I laugh along with him.

“I’ll think about it,” I finally tell him. I know that I will have to find a new source of income soon, now that the district is running on physical currency again. Our victors’ winnings were never reinstated after the War, but it hadn’t mattered in those initial months when we all provided for each other as best as we could. But now, my mother’s wage is only enough as long as I can provide food from hunting. Life would be much easier for the both of us if I could find work.

There is another reason why I know that I need to find a new job. Working with the construction team had made it so much easier to keep myself distracted and maintain my routine during that difficult first year, and now that I have more time on my hands, I find my mind drifting to the past more often than I would like.

I physically shake my head to clear my thoughts. “Can I come over tomorrow?”

I can hear the smile in his voice when he answers. “You know that you don’t have to ask.”

“Think of it as more of a warning,” I suggest, grinning as well.

*

I arrive at the bakery minutes before it closes, knowing that Peeta will have already switched off the ovens and completed his preparations for tomorrow. He greets me with an easy smile, but after locking the door behind Bevan and Ford, his expression turns serious.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to push things the other day –“

I interrupt before he can get any further into an apology that isn’t necessary. “You didn’t, Peeta. I just don’t want to rush this, that’s all.” His features still hold concern and remorse, and I know that he needs more from me. “I like what we have right now, and I don’t want to jeopardize it.”

He steps closer to tuck a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “I like what we have, too.”

I watch as his eyes trail down to take in the way my throat moves as I swallow. I wait until his gaze meets mine before continuing. “I also liked what we did last night.”

The speed at which his expression breaks into delight has me biting back my own grin. “Me too.”

“I’d like to do it again,” I whisper.

His smile has disappeared by the time he answers, and now, I am biting my lip for an entirely different reason. “Me too,” he murmurs in that low, rough voice that I have come to associate with the more intimate moments that we have shared so far.

We make our way to the living quarters, not quite running, but with enough urgency to have us both fighting off nervous laughter. Once there, I take his hand into mine and lead him to the bedroom.

There is less hesitancy as we undress each other this time, though I suspect that it takes us longer because we both linger on several occasions, more through curiosity than doubt.

There is still a reasonable amount of sunlight in the sky at this time of day, and I fight the urge to cover my body when Peeta drags his eyes slowly down to my feet and up again. I avert my own gaze when he tries to meet my eyes, instead resting on his artificial leg.

“Do you always sleep with it on?”

“No,” he admits. “Only when I’m with you.”

I had suspected as much during those nights that we shared a bed on tour and in the Training Center. “Would you like to take it off?”

A sliver of fear crosses his expression, but is quickly masked by an apologetic smile. “Not today. If that’s alright?”

I grin, relieved that I haven’t crossed a line, and amused that _he_ should be the one to ask _me_ if it’s alright. “Of course.”

But in the next moment, polite, soft-spoken Peeta is gone. Now, all I see is heat and hunger in his expression. “Lie down.”

I turn and make my way to the bed, trying to make myself seem small as I lie on my back. I stare at the ceiling as I feel the mattress dip under his weight, but force myself to look at him when he comes into view. My body turns almost involuntarily towards him when he comes to rest by my side.

“Tell me to stop anytime you want,” he says as his fingers trail up my arm and across my shoulder to my collarbone. There he pauses, and I realize that he is expecting an answer from me. I doubt that I will ever want him to stop, but nod in agreement anyway.

Now, he doesn’t hesitate, and his hand travels swiftly downward. When he cups my breast, I can’t stop my back from arching and pushing me further into his touch.

He takes this as a sign of approval, shuffling his own body until his mouth is level with my chest. I am keenly aware of the way his eyes never leave mine as takes my nipple between his lips. I am even more aware the moment that he releases it, only to swipe his tongue over the tip. All the while, his fingers trace swirling patterns across my other breast, and it’s all I can do to keep myself still and not squirm under his touch. His focus may only be on my chest, but my entire body feels as though it is throbbing with energy that is bursting to get out.

My resolve breaks when he releases a steady breath over the taut peak that lies millimeters from his puckered lips. My body shudders. I whimper – I can’t help it – and only just catch Peeta’s grin as he shifts his weight until he can reach my other breast with his mouth. He mirrors his previous actions, and this time I don’t hold back. I let my fingers comb through his hair, my hips thrust into his stomach, my voice travel up through my throat and out of my mouth in a low groan.

It seems to spur him on, and he spends more time repeating the sequence. Lips to suck, tongue to lick, exhale to cool. Over and over again, until I have to dig my fingernails into his scalp to get his attention. He takes the hint, rising back up the bed and resting in his original position by my side with one his legs draped across one of mine.

The hand that had been on my breast is trailing slowly but deliberately over my abdomen. His gaze is fixed on me, and I find myself nodding my assent once more. When he dangles his fingers enticingly between my legs, my body jerks at the contact.

He sniggers, evidently pleased with himself.

“Tease,” I mutter.

“You can have your revenge later,” he tells me.

I start to promise him that I will, but his fingers press into me again.

“Looks like I’ve found an effective way to silence you.”

“I’m not the talker in this relationship,” I remind him, but quickly realize that he is distracted from our conversation.

I see him struggle to angle his hand so that he can mimic my actions from the previous night. He shifts a little on the bed, and a moment later smiles as he gets into the right position. In fact, all I can see his is smile, so tantalizingly close that I have to reach for his mouth with mine. His low groan seems to travel up from his throat and into my own – a moment later, I reciprocate. Because he rubs two fingers between my labia in the circular motion that I had shared with him yesterday, causing me to moan loudly into his mouth.

As he sets a steady rhythm between my legs, his lips leave mine and move to place hot, wet kisses along my jaw and cheek.

“You’re wet,” he murmurs in my ear.

“You’re doing a good job,” I reply, somewhat breathlessly.

His shoulder shakes with pleased laughter, and I can’t help but lean forward to bite it lightly.

He responds by moving his hand further between my legs, slipping one finger inside me and following quickly with a second. It feels more uncomfortable than yesterday, but not unpleasant. When he twists his hand to place his thumb against my clitoris and resume the circling, I murmur a grateful _yes_ into his ear.

He presses his thumb harder, and when I whimper, the rhythm quickens. I’m close, and tell him so, moments before that familiar coil of pleasure starts to unravel deep within me. I curl my toes and tilt my head back.

He uses the opportunity to sink his teeth into the base of my neck, and it is this splinter of pain that finally pushes me over the edge. I climax with a shout, arching into his fingers, his mouth, his entire body for as much contact as possible.

Slowly, I sink into the mattress as the haze begins to clear. It is only when Peeta speaks that I realize that neither of us have moved from our positions.

“Do you think you can come again?”

I laugh breathlessly. I know that I can, but I also know that it won’t be as intense.

As if to reinforce his wish, he curls the fingers that are still inside me, and I find my lungs gasping for air once more. “How long do you need to recover?”

“A minute or two.”

He nuzzles against my neck. “I think it’s already been a minute.” And then he returns his thumb to my swollen clitoris and resumes the pattern that we both know so well now.

My eyes snap shut. “Lighter,” I plead – or order, I’m not sure which. Either way, he complies. “Still sensitive.”

When I tell him that he can press harder, he obliges again. My body proves me right, releasing a small but sharp frisson of pleasure as I clench around his fingers once more. My breath catches, and in contrast to the first time, no sound comes from my mouth as my body pulses through its second orgasm.

This time, Peeta does pull his fingers out when I go limp, only to plunge them into his own mouth.

“Next time,” he tells me as he settles onto the mattress once more, “I want to use my mouth.”

 _Next time?_ “We’re not done with this time,” I point out.

With that, I push him onto his back. Lifting my upper body, I shift to straddle his stomach. I watch his eyes widen as his erection pushes against my rear.

“Katniss?”

I shake my head faintly, biting my lip when he visibly relaxes, reminding me that I’m not the only one who isn’t ready for that final step.

I rise again and shuffle on my knees until I can rest of his thighs. Taking his cock into one hand, I wrap the other over it and lace my fingers. He groans loudly as he sits up on his elbows to watch. I pump up and down, the way that he had shown me last night.

I watch him watching me, fascinated by the incremental changes in his expression that indicate his mounting pleasure.

When his head drops back onto the pillow, I know that he is close to finishing. I tighten my grip and increase the speed, and am rewarded by the seemingly unconscious thrusting of his hips.

“Kat…“

I see his lips move as if to complete the rest of my name, but no sound leaves his throat. Instead, his body jerks beneath mine and his cock pulses in my hands. I only release him when I feel him relax, lifting myself off of him before stretching to lie level with his waist. This time, I lick and suck at his abdomen until I have taken in every drop, smiling to myself as the muscles beneath my mouth spasm in pleasant surprise.

When I’m done, I rise to the head of the bed and flop down next to him.

We both laugh when my stomach growls.

“Hungry?”

“A little,” I admit sheepishly.

Peeta scrambles off the bed, informing me that there are some leftovers in the bakery kitchen as he hastily dons his undershorts and pants. I watch lazily from my reclined position, laughing quietly as he breaks into a light jog when he reaches the door. He soon returns with a tray of assorted rolls and cakes, as well as a triumphant grin that only serves to deepen my amusement.

His expression changes as he nears the bed, and as I follow his gaze, I appreciate why. I am still naked, too caught up in the lingering warmth that remains from the almost overwhelming heat of earlier. Now, it is my turn to scramble from the bed in search of clothing.

We eat our makeshift meal right here in the bedroom again, glancing at each other every so often to share a shy smile. When I make to leave and return home for the night, Peeta pulls me into his strong arms. I feel his hot breath against the tip of my ear and expect him to speak. In fact, I am sure that he opens his mouth several times to say something – but the words never come.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to apologize for the delay – I was writing this to distract myself from a real-life thing, but then it arrived and distracted me from finishing this! There is one more chapter to come because this ended up much longer than I expected and it made sense to split it into two. I just want to use this opportunity to thank everyone who subscribed, left kudos or comments, liked or reblogged on Tumblr, and generally encouraged me to keep writing. I really appreciate it :)


	6. Chapter 6

 

On the day that would have heralded the start of the 77th Games, I receive a presidential pardon. The transcript of the remaining victors’ final conversation, where we had debated Coin’s proposal for the Games, had been published the previous week – via an anonymous source. The days that followed brought more stories regarding Coin’s presidency in Thirteen. Her disdain for me, her approval of indiscriminate use of bombing – and her personal authorization for several underage citizens to join the Medical Corps, overruling the concerns of senior medical personnel. All were killed in the bombing outside the Presidential Palace, including my sister.

It is only when fragments of Peeta’s medical records surface that I think to call Gale and get some answers of my own.

“It was all authorized by Paylor,” he tells me bluntly. “People have been asking questions ever since your trial ended, and it was just getting worse. It was only going to be a matter of time before someone joined up the dots, and if they started drawing comparisons between Coin and Paylor, well, it could mark the end for her. She needs to emphasize how different she is from Coin, and the only way to do that is to show how similar Coin was to Snow.” He pauses for a long moment before continuing. “This is good for you, Katniss.”

I know that it is – I will be able to travel to other districts should I ever need to, even apply for a government position like Gale if I wanted to. But it doesn’t make it any easier to accept that awful sense of helplessness. “I feel like I’m being used again,” I tell him quietly. Thinking of Peeta, I add, “Like _we’re_ being used again.”

Gale sighs heavily, and I’m immediately drawn back to that dank, narrow corridor in Thirteen where I had told him that I would agree to be Coin’s Mockingjay. I wonder if he is thinking of that too when he answers. “I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t know the extent of it myself until most of the details had already been released to the media. But I should have given you a heads-up.”

I bite back the urge to agree with him, reminding myself that he doesn’t owe me anything. While we speak on a regular basis, we will never be the friends that we once were. Gale had been changed by the War as much as I had been changed by the Games – if not more.

“What else is going to come out?” I ask finally.

“Nothing. Nothing that I know of,” he clarifies. “They should have enough information to leave you both alone. Maybe somewhere down the line, at some big anniversary of the rebellion, they’ll want to revisit what happened with the two of you, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

I have to believe that he is right.

The pardon has one main consequence on my life – it means that I can formally apply for a teaching job, since the education system is under state control. By late summer, the next influx of migrants brings the handful of teachers needed to start the school. I find myself knocking nervously on the door of the new Head Teacher one morning and introducing myself.

He greets me with a kind smile, one that takes me back to the Training Center and to Beetee Latier. “I know who you are.”

I wait for him to finish making tea for the both of us before launching into the speech that I had rehearsed with Peeta the previous day. He listens to me without interrupting, though his blank expression gives away few signs of encouragement.

When I finish, he gives me a sympathetic smile. “I brought all of the teachers that I need with me,” he explains apologetically. “However, if you’re willing, I may be able to employ you as a trainee. I’ve been told that the factory will be opening next year, in which case we can expect more settlers to arrive. With them, I’m anticipating an increased demand for the school in the years to come, and will most likely need more teachers for the next school year.”

I gratefully accept his offer, despite knowing that the wage will be lower than I want. I don’t care, because for the first time, I feel as if I am in control of my future.

I head straight to the bakery when our meeting ends. Peeta knows from my smile that I was successful, and lifts me into his arms as soon as we’re left alone in the kitchen.

“It’s just an apprenticeship,” I tell him.

He doesn’t seem any less enthusiastic as he sets me down again. “It’s still fantastic.”

Over lunch later, he looks across at me and grins. “How does it feel to have a career?”

A _career_. I hadn’t thought of it like that, but I suppose that it is. It’s a word that we in Twelve have always associated with the Games, but has had a more positive and less toxic meaning in other districts that is beginning to filter through to us now.

It represents a future where I have a purpose other than to simply survive, and an opportunity to be an influential and positive role model in others’ lives.

“Nice,” I eventually respond. A little daunting, yes, but nice to know that I have a direction to walk in – and what’s more, that I have _chosen_ this direction.

Peeta grins at me for so long that I end up having to lower my eyes and mutter, “What?”

“You’re going to do great, Katniss.”

I stay at the bakery for the rest of the day, helping Peeta in the kitchen while Bevan makes deliveries and Ford works the shop front. When we retire to the living quarters for the evening, I find that Peeta has some news for me too.

“Sae came by yesterday.”

I immediately know the reason for her visit – I had stutteringly relayed the conversation that I had had with my mother to Peeta. We don’t discuss it after that, instead throwing ourselves into making our evening meal. I can tell, however, that it occupies his mind as much as it does mine, and dinner is a quiet affair. After, he asks if I want to switch on the television.

I decline, holding my hand out for him. He doesn’t hesitate to take it, and I lead him to his room. But when we arrive, he seems frozen in place. I whisper his name as my hand shoots upward to caress his jaw. “Peeta?”

“I’m a little nervous,” he admits quietly.

The breathy laugh that escapes me sounds foreign to my own ears. “So am I. Maybe we could we just start like we always do, and see where it takes us?”

He nods at my suggestion, and when I tug at his sleeve, he follows me willingly to the bed. We take turns undressing each other until we are both in our underwear.

He issues that now familiar request. “Lie down.”

When I am settled, he kneels between legs before curling his fingers below the hem of my panties. I nod, lifting my hips to allow him to remove the garment. We have been here enough times for my embarrassment to have faded, but I don’t think that I will ever become accustomed to the way he looks at my naked body with such hunger.

When he lowers his mouth to where I need him most, my hands fly into his hair. I hold him in place as he begins that sequence that he knows I enjoy so much. Lick, suck, blow. Before long, I am writhing beneath him, my fingernails digging into his scalp. My hips push up against him when he slips his fingers inside me, and I faintly wonder how he manages to keep going so relentlessly despite all of my thrashing and squirming. The thought abruptly leaves however, when I come with a low, prolonged moan that seems to reverberate around the small room.

My body goes limp as Peeta makes his way up the bed. I move, as I usually do, to push him onto his back, but he stops me.

“I want to be inside you,” he murmurs.

“I want that, too,” I tell him.

“I think…I think that I could remove my leg today.”

I give him an inquiring look, to which he shrugs nervously. “That way you won’t be the only one feeling vulnerable.”

Now, he does roll over, sitting up before reaching for the attachment. I sit up too, taking in the way he nimbly loosens the small fastenings. When the prosthetic comes free, he leans over the side of the bed to drop it to the floor with a gentle thud.

He turns back to face me. “Are you still okay with this?”

Throughout my life, I have always been able to express myself better through my actions than my words. And this moment isn’t any different. So, I lower my upper body far enough to be able to place my mouth against his damaged thigh in a soft kiss before peering up at him. “Yes. Are you?”

He answers by placing his hands under arms and lifting me up until I can straddle him. “Completely.”

We kiss, slow and soft at first, but building with every second until we are both desperately clutching each other, our lungs heaving for air.

“The condoms are in the drawer,” Peeta informs me. I lift myself from him and reach for the bedside cabinet as he shuffles back to the center of the bed. “Sae said that it’s a pretty tough material and we should be able to reuse one a number of times before it weakens. Just need to sterilize it in hot, but not boiling, water.”

I grab one from the box and turn around. I’m sure that Peeta can see trepidation in my expression, because despite the fact that he is sat exposed and without his artificial leg, his comforting arms are reaching for me. I sit down next to him, carefully keeping my gaze fixed on his face and trying in vain to ignore the fact that we are both naked.

“It’s okay,” he whispers gently. “How about we start at the beginning again and see where it takes us?”

I nod, placing the condom down on the other side of his waist and out of my view. He leans forward to take my head into both of his hands, and together we begin again. He kisses me gently. I return it for a moment before extending my actions, wrapping my hand around the back of his neck and pulling him closer. He presses his body against mine, and although we have been in this situation before, the knowledge of what is to come makes the moment seem even more intimate.

Eventually, he helps me to shift onto his lap, and groans against my throat when I rub myself against his erection. A moment later, it is my turn to groan as he sinks his teeth into the strip of skin that covers my clavicle and tugs roughly.

He pulls back to mutter an apology, but I quickly see that his attention is caught by something else. I follow his gaze to where our bodies meet, and appreciate why he is so mesmerized by the sight. His erection is trapped between us, slick from the way I have been gyrating over him.

We share a look that is full of awe and lust, and perhaps a little disbelief that we have somehow made it to this moment. That we have survived the Games and the War, Snow and Coin, that we have progressed beyond his innocent infatuation and my refusal to look beyond the immediate dangers.

What’s more, we have arrived here together. To a relationship that is built on friendship and trust and respect.

I tell him that I’m ready before reaching for the condom. He watches with wide eyes as I smooth it down onto him before running my hand upwards for a few languid strokes.

Peeta nods, just once, and it’s all the encouragement I need to lower myself onto him. Weeks of sharing his bed and exploring each other’s bodies mean that this is a less painful experience than it might have been, but the initial moments still feel uncomfortable. I can tell from the way that he holds himself so stiffly that he is trying his best not to move and let me adjust in my own time.

I smooth my fingers over his cheek in gratitude. “It’s okay.”

He gives me such an earnest look that I can’t stop the smile that breaks out. I whirl my hips around him in a circular motion, a move that I know works for Peeta as much as it does for me when his hands fly to my waist.

Soon, I feel comfortable enough to be able to lift myself up until only his tip is inside me, before grinding down again. This new movement sparks that familiar quiver of desire deep in my stomach. My enthusiasm grows with that spark, and within minutes I am gripping Peeta’s shoulders tightly as I bounce up and down on top of him.

“I can’t…”

They’re the same words that he uses when I take him into my mouth, to warn me.

I stop and grind my hips down in a tight circle. His head falls back against the headboard with a thud, eyes fluttering shut at the same time that his lips part. He climaxes with a drawn-out, guttural groan, fingers dug into my hips to keep them in place and himself buried deep inside me.

His eyes are still closed when I lean forward to pepper his jaw with soft kisses. He laughs breathlessly, probably as surprised as I am at this tender show of affection after an act that, while loving and passionate, was far from gentle. But this is what Peeta has always seemed to coax from me, a paradox of emotions from one moment to the next.

I slide onto the bed beside him, vaguely registering how he reaches for a handkerchief to wipe himself down with and wrap the condom in. I wait until he pushes himself into a reclining position beside me before turning to face him.

“Katniss, I…”

He has that same hesitant look that has graced his features so frequently over the past few weeks – and I now finally recognize the reason behind it. “You love me.”

“Real,” he whispers. He clears his throat before continuing. “And you love me. Real or not real?”

I smile, waiting for him to return it to ensure that he already knows what I will say. “Real.”

*

A week before the school year begins, I move in with Peeta at the bakery. He had made the suggestion so casually, pointing out that it was closer to the school and that I would be able to supplement my apprenticeship wage by helping him in the kitchen during non-school hours. But I wasn’t ignorant of the implications. He wanted us to live together, to take another significant step in our relationship. I take the time to think carefully for a few days before giving him my answer.

My mother opens up the rest of our house in the Village to paying tenants as soon as I prepare to leave. In addition to the money that they will provide, their company will no doubt help to occupy her time and her thoughts. Our relationship has plateaued into something more akin to tentative friendship than a mother-daughter bond, but I don’t think either of us minds. We lost the innocence of that bond long ago, and that we have managed to salvage _something_ from our experiences is an achievement in itself.

So I trundle into the bakery one morning with a bag slung over each shoulder and a large box between my arms. The sum total of my belongings, not including my father’s bow and quiver that I have kept at Peeta’s for weeks already due to the proximity of the woods.

I deliberately keep my head down as I enter, avoiding inquiring gazes from the bakery’s customers. While Peeta and I have never tried to hide the fact that we have been spending time together, we have been purposefully discreet in showing affection towards each other in public. I suspect that the fact that I am moving my belongings into his apartment is the first confirmation that anyone other than my mother, Haymitch and Sae has received regarding the nature of our companionship.

Peeta chooses that moment to emerge from the kitchen, stopping abruptly when he spots me making my way to the partition. He raises the counter door to let me through. If any of our observers were in doubt as to the status of our relationship, the tender expression that he holds in this moment would make it obvious.

But right now, I don’t care who else witnesses it – I only care that I have the privilege of seeing it.

*

I have been at my new job for two weeks when I first witness one of Peeta’s flashbacks.

Bevan glances over in concern as I let myself into the bakery kitchen after work. “Peeta hasn’t been down all day,” he reveals as he rushes to the oven. “I’ve been up to the apartment and knocked a couple of times, but he didn’t answer.”

I reassure him that Peeta was fine when I left this morning, and suggest that he’s probably having a nap. But even as the words leave my lips, I know how unlikely it seems. Still, I feign composure, picking up a couple of cheese buns to take upstairs with me.

When I get there, the door is locked. It’s never locked. I fumble for the keys that Peeta insisted I keep but have never needed to use until now. It takes a moment to locate the one that I need, and I slide it in before pushing the door wide open.

“Peeta?”

Silence greets me. I glance into the open-plan reception room and kitchen but see no sign of him. Turning towards the hallway that leads to the remaining rooms, I hear the faint sound of trickling water.

I don’t hesitate now, dropping my bag to the ground and breaking into a sprint. The bathroom door is shut, but thankfully not locked, and gives way easily when I turn the handle.

“Peeta?”

I scan the room from right to left, almost making a full semicircle before I locate him. He is sat on the floor beneath the basin, upper body huddled over bent knees and head buried in crooked arms.

I rush towards him, dropping to my knees when I arrive so that I can place my hands on his shoulders. “Peeta?”

His voice is muffled when he whispers a single word. A name. “Johanna.”

Looking around again, I realize that the trickling sound is coming from the shower. He must have switched it on long ago, because the normally abundant stream of water has dwindled to a dribble, the distance that it drops making the sound seem comparatively loud.

“She’s fine,” I insist as I look back at him. “Johanna is safe, she’s back home in Seven. And you’re safe too, Peeta. You’re safe. You’re home, with me.”

“I couldn’t help her. I could hear it all, and I couldn’t help her.”

I stand abruptly. The sound of the shower must have triggered the flashback, though I have no idea why. Peeta has never shown an aversion to water before. Reaching into the cubicle, I turn the tap. The noise is immediately replaced by the sound of Peeta’s labored breaths, and I quickly turn and drop to the floor again. This time, I settle by his side, slowly stroking the back of his neck to coax him to lift his head. He complies after a moment, only to bury himself into my shoulder instead.

I know that he has been working long hours recently. With the influx of new settlers over the course of the summer, the bakery has been busier than ever. And with my new job, I can no longer help Peeta in the kitchen as much as I had been. But I hadn’t realized that he had been struggling so much until last week, when he would arrive upstairs two hours after the bakery’s closing. _Just getting a head start on tomorrow’s prep _, he had told me.__

“It’s okay.”

I have no idea how many times I murmur those words into his hair, but they must sink in eventually. He shifts to face me, curling his body further into mine.

“Tired,” he mumbles.

I kiss his forehead before tucking him under my chin. “I know. But I’m here now. It’s okay.”

I don’t know how long we stay there, but eventually I stand and struggle to get Peeta on his feet. Together, we stumble the short distance to the bedroom and flop unceremoniously onto the bed. I only just manage to pull the blanket across our bodies before we both close our eyes, limbs tangled so tightly that I wouldn’t be able to extract myself from his embrace even if I had wanted to.

*

I call Dr. Aurelius for a final time in October. He will, no doubt, continue to hear about me from Peeta, but I am no longer to be one of his regular patients.

“You’ll still have bad days,” he tells me. “Just remember your coping mechanisms. Routine, to-do lists, doing something that you enjoy or that gives you a physical product as a sign of accomplishment. But there will still be some days that you’ll have to write off completely…you just need to accept that.”

I try to remember his words the following week, when my limbs feel too heavy to even contemplate leaving the bed. Peeta calls the school to let them know that I won’t be in. “I told them you were unwell.”

Well, it isn’t entirely untrue. He encourages me to eat some of the eggs that he has made for me before disappearing downstairs for the rest of the day. I sleep in fits and starts, visited by many ghosts of years gone by. When Peeta finally returns in the evening, he makes me sit up so that he can feed me hot soup.

“I can feed myself,” I grumble.

“I know,” he responds with a smile. “But I want to feel useful.”

“You’re useful,” I retort. “You’re the reason I’m alive.”

I watch as his eyes dart to his hand. He is thinking of the night of the execution, when he prevented me from swallowing the nightlock pill.

But that isn’t what I mean. “You make me want to live,” I clarify. “To come back to you when I feel like I’m drowning. You make me want to fight back.”

“You didn’t fight today.” But his tone is factual and not accusatory, and I nod in agreement.

“It was too hard,” I whisper.

He takes my hand into his and clutches it against his chest. “How about we make a pact to fight it together tomorrow?”

A long moment passes before I answer. “Okay.”

And then he pushes the tray to one side and holds me for long enough that I start to feel drowsy again.

“Come outside with me,” he asks quietly.

“Peeta, it’s freezing –“

“Just put your jacket on over your sleep clothes, you’ll be fine.”

I really don’t want to leave the bed and am about to tell him so, but he disappears quickly. Returning a minute later, he drapes my hunting jacket over my shoulders. “Trust me,” he says softly.

So I do. I raise myself onto unsteady legs, accepting Peeta’s help to get my feet into boots. I follow him downstairs and then outside, letting him envelop my small hand inside his larger one. He leads me out of the main square and towards the Seam, now rebuilt with the same buildings that occupy the rest of the town.

A painfully sharp shiver runs through my entire body as we pass the final house. “It’s cold.”

We are by the edge of the meadow now, and he finally stops and pulls me into his arms. “Look up.”

“Peeta…”

“Just look up. Please.”

So I follow his gaze. With the town’s artificial lighting behind us, the night sky above the meadow and the edge of the woods is virtually clear of light pollution.

All I can see is the stars, bright and clear and so very striking.

“It’s beautiful,” I murmur.

“It is,” he agrees quietly. “Just wanted to share it with you.”

We stand there, wrapped around each other, simply taking in the sights and the sounds of the night sky. A long time passes before he speaks again. “I want to share everything with you.”

*

By November, we have settled into a shared a routine. Peeta bakes for his livelihood and paints as a diversion, both for pleasure and to keep his nightmares at bay. He hasn’t had a flashback since he hired another assistant for the bakery. He rarely spends an entire day in the kitchen now, usually having either the morning or afternoon to himself to run errands, paint or spend time in the Village with Haymitch.

I am enjoying my apprenticeship at the school, now that the initial awkwardness of being recognized as the Mockingjay has evaporated. I still hunt and forage in my free time, offering whatever spoils I don’t keep to my mother, Haymitch or Greasy Sae. Though I no longer need the woods as my savior from starvation, they still provide the same respite from errant thoughts and images that they did after my first Games. Peeta rarely comes with me – I know that in his mind, trees and thick shrub land draw parallels with the first arena, and I certainly can’t blame him for wanting to avoid that.

Today is Saturday, and I allow myself the luxury of a late start after a tiring week at school. Peeta is downstairs to help during the bakery’s busiest day. From the bed, I can lean far enough to reach the edge of the curtain, and do so to pull it back and revel in the rare, startlingly bright sunshine that this morning has brought with it.

Prim’s anniversary will be soon, but I feel like a very different person to the one who almost drowned from the significance of this event a year ago. Last year, I wouldn’t have been able to sit and enjoy the beauty of something as simple as the sun shining. And though it will be hard, I feel confident that I will be able to get through it.

Eventually, I stir, ready to dress myself and face the day. But Peeta, it seems, has other plans and I return from the bathroom to find him sitting on the bed. He has drawn the curtain once more and kicked off his shoes.

“Shouldn’t you be downstairs?” I ask in mock-reproof.

He shrugs. “Quiet day. They don’t need me down there, so I thought we could spend some time together instead.”

“Oh? And what did you have in mind?”

I realize as soon as we lock eyes through the mirror of the dresser than I needn’t have asked. I have become very familiar with that look of desire that he currently wears, though the pleasant shiver of anticipation that it sends through me doesn’t seem to ever lessen in intensity.

I feign disinterest, more for my own amusement than anything else. “I need to get dressed, Peeta.”

That gets him to his feet and across the room by the time I look up again. “Do you really?”

His arms wrap around my waist and I resist the urge to lean back into him. “What if you’re needed downstairs?”

The answer is simple and full of confidence. “I won’t be.”

But it’s the warmth that spreads through me when his lips fall onto the back of my neck that finally breaks my resolve. My head drops forward of its own accord to grant him access, and it’s all the encouragement he needs to begin unbuttoning my sleep shirt.

I whisper his name when he runs his fingers across my breasts, massaging gently along the way. “The bed?”

“Right here,” comes the determined response.

“Your leg…”

“It’ll be fine.”

His tone leaves no room for argument, and so I trust his judgment. Turning in his arms, I feel his hands move quickly to tug my cotton pants down before moving to my rear. He lifts me onto the dressing table and quickly steps between my legs.

My open shirt rests on my shoulders but Peeta makes no attempt to remove it. He also makes no move to lower my panties either, instead choosing to slip his fingers beneath the side of the flimsy material. His cool touch against that already sensitive bundle of nerves makes my entire body jerk into his.

A noise escapes me, half-whimper and half-groan. I can tell that he is in one his determined moods when his fingers begin a persistent rhythm between my legs. He watches my reaction for a moment before burying his lips into my neck.

I grip the edge of the table, and before long my hips are rotating to the tempo that he has set. I come with a cry that resonates around the room, eyes screwed tightly shut.

Which is why I don’t register Peeta’s movements until he is on his knees in front of me. He curls his fingers over the top of my underwear this time to push the fabric far enough to expose what he wants. And then he places his tongue on me, making long, languid strokes. I bury my fingers in his hair to keep him place, and to let him know how good it feels. His speed increases immediately, and it isn’t long before he replaces gentle licks with the sharp bites and sucks that he knows my body can’t resist. I’m hunched over him when I climax quickly and breathlessly.

When the presence of mind returns to me, I cradle his jaw with my fingers and tug gently, encouraging him to stand. He tears his attention away from my inner thigh to gaze up at me. I quell the feeling of disappointment that hits when he rises but turns away from me, instead making his way to the bedside drawer to pull out a condom. I use the time to shrug my open shirt off of my shoulders, but keep my panties on. When he returns, I claw at the fastening of his pants and push the fabric down, followed quickly by his shorts to free his erection so that he can slip on the rubber sleeve.

And then he slips his cock underneath my panties and into me, and I have to admit that this is a sensation I don’t think I will ever tire of. I wrap my legs around him, tilting my hips upwards just a little, and we both moan at the difference that a subtle change in angle can make. Peeta rotates his hips leisurely, far too slowly for the mood I’m in. From the corner of my eye, I can see that he is distracted by something behind me, so I turn my head as far as I can, and observe the reflection of my back, arching with every inward thrust. But I suspect that it’s the view of my rear bouncing with every forward snap of his hips that has caught Peeta’s attention.

“Do you want to watch as well?”

I do. So I push at his chest lightly, encouraging him to move back. I almost regret it when he pulls out, but I remind myself of what is to come. Peeta uses the opportunity to pull back and take in the sight of my body, his lips curling in appreciation. When I turn to face the mirror and push my rear out towards him, I see his reflected smile widen. I plant my palms on the edge of the dressing table in anticipation.

But then his fingers clamp around my hips, and I forget to watch the intricacies of his expression. I forget everything, because he pushes into me again, and all I can think is _Peeta_. He invades my every sense – the feel of him behind and inside of me collides with the sight of his reflection ahead. I can smell the two of us and the arousal that we coax from each other, and I lick my lips to ensure that I can still taste him in my mouth. And all I can hear is the erotic sound of his skin slapping against mine, much more purposefully than before.

I finally find the ability to focus on the view ahead of me in the mirror, and understand now why the sight had captivated him. It isn’t just that I can see what he is doing to me, but that I can see what it means to him. His mouth gapes open – as does mine – as he watches the way my body jerks as he drives in. His eyes are glazed and unfocused and his fingers grip my hips almost painfully as he pulls me back to meet him.

I lean further forward to rest my elbows on the surface of the dressing table, and the new angle sends his tip to precisely the right spot. I moan loudly, and he takes this as an instruction to thrust harder and faster.

I have to shift again, this time to rest my upper body on just one arm. With the other, I reach down to finger myself. Peeta groans when he realizes, and his own hand quickly leaves my hip to follow. He clamps his fingers down over mine but above the fabric of my underwear, and I am reminded of the first time we laid together in his bed.

The added stimulation means that it doesn’t take long for me to reach my peak. I arch back, gasping for air as that sweet blend of pleasure and relief shoots through my entire body. My muscles are still tight around his cock when Peeta drives in deep and stays there, spending himself into the condom. I watch his reflection in fascination, mesmerized by the near-perfect circle that his mouth forms as he releases a rasping moan before slumping forward.

It isn’t long before he straightens and slips out of me. In the mirror, I can see the way his shoulders heave as his lungs struggle for breath, but that doesn’t stop me from pulling up and leaning against his chest. When his arms wrap around me, I place my hands over them, reveling in the warmth and safety that they have always provided, but also the multitude of feelings that have been added during these past months. Desire, passion, heat.

Love.

“It was always going to be this way,” I tell him when he finally meets my gaze through our reflections. “It was always going to be you and me.”

He presses his lips to my temple before whispering a single word into my ear. “Real.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title taken from Everlong by Foo Fighters. Thank you to everyone who read and enjoyed and took the time to leave feedback in any form – I truly appreciate it!


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